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LOWELL LECTURES. 



THE 



PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY; 



OR, 



THE END OE PROVIDENCE IN THE 
WORLD AND MAN. 



REV. OEVILLE DEWEY, D.D. 




NEW YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY JAMES MILLER 

(SUCCESSOR TO C. S. FRANCIS AND COMPANY), 

522 BROADWAY. 
1864. 



: 



■_.. 
■ K2 



; 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by 

JAMES MILLER, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District 
of New York. 



JOHN F. TROW, 

PRINTER, STEREOTYPER, AND ELECTROTVPER, 

46, 48, & 50 Greene Street, 

New York. 



PREFACE 



No person, with any comprehension of what he is doing 
would publish a book on the Problem of Human Destiny, 
without wishing to put into the title of it, some such phrase 
as " humble attempt" at a solution of, or " approximation " 
thereto. Herder denominates his great work, "Ideen — 
Ideas, on the History of Humanity." I would have entitled 
this volume of Lectures, " Hints on the Problem of Human 
Destiny," but that the word " hints " did not seem to befit 
a Course of Lectures. Nor could I very well say, " Outlines 
of the Problem ; " for the work does not pretend to be so 
much. In short, I do not see but I must let the title stand 
in its appalling nakedness and vastness ; presuming that the 
reader will expect nothing on such a subject, but approx- 
imations, hints, and outlines. 

I would say, however, very explicitly, that here are no 
abstruse discussions, such as might be looked for, perhaps, 
from the title of this volume ; that, as I was to address a 
popular audience, my discourse has been conformed to that 
intention ; that I undertook to speak for those who were to 



i v PREFACE. 

hear me, and not for philosophers ; and that all I attempted, 
was to offer for the consideration of my hearers, certain 
views of life, of the human condition, and of the scene of 
the world, that might help them better to understand their 
nature, lot, and destiny. 

I am sensible that I am putting forth this work at a 
time when the public mind is absorbed with questions, not 
of philosophy, but of awful fact ; when we are pressed to 
solve, not the problem of the world, but the problem of our 
own national stability and honor. But although the first 
shock of the crisis seemed almost to unseat all our theories 
and thoughts of life, yet as the struggle has gone on, I con- 
fess that it has driven me, more and more, to the great prin- 
ciples and resorts of my faith in Providence and Humanity ; 
and it has seemed to me, therefore, that the discussions 
proposed have some pertinence to the time. 

Sheffield, April, 1864, 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 

The title of these Lectures. The question proposed, and the propriety of dis- 
cussing it. That there is manifest design in the world system. What is the 
ultimate design ? Answer : Human culture. The history of thought on the 
subject : in Egypt — Rite of burial ; in Persia — the Zendavesta ; in the He- 
brew religion — Book of Ecclesiastes ; in the Christian — Epistle to the Ro- 
mans ; Plato, and the neo-platonists, Vico, Herder, Hegel, Comte, Buckle, 
Dr. Draper. The difficulties and trials of men's minds on this subject ; the 
discussion of it designed, not for philosophers, but for the people, . page 1 

LECTURE II. 

The problem of Evil in the world. 1. Statement of the case. The mystery in- 
volved — what it amounts to. Very dark, but not all dark. The old civili- 
zations. The case in actual experience, purely individual. 2. The question 
about the solution of it. The principle maintained that, from the nature of 
the case, and by the very terms of the problem, it appears that it was impos- 
sible to exclude all evil. The difficulty lies in the application of the 
principle. Leibnitz's Theory; Rogers's Table Talk; Voltaire's indignant 
protest. Archbishop King on " The Origin of Evil." 3. Conclusions to be 
taken into our future reasonings ; that the moral system of the world is one 
of spontaneous development — of law — and of restraint. Its appeal is to hope 
and courage, . . . . . . -. - . .24 

LECTURE HI. 

The material world as the theatre of the great design. Its form and structure. 
1. General arrangements. How the earth is made habitable. Means of 
warming it. Ministry of the sea. 2. Specific adjustments of man to the 
world, and of the world to man ; the vegetable, mineral, and animal creation. 
3. Distinct adaptations to the higher culture — in the moderated fertility of 
the earth — in the order of nature — and in the beauty of nature, . . 52 



yi TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



LECTURE IV. 

Man's physical constitution. The ministry to the soul, of the senses and appe- 
tites — instanced in the sense of touch, in the faculty of speech, in laughter, 
in the human countenance, and the human hand. The appetites ; commonly 
regarded as enemies, corrupters of the soul. Plea against this charge : from 
their uses — from the distinction between their natural state and their artificial 
and unnatural state — from what they teach and demand — from the evident 
inversion which vice produces, of the natural relations of the body and 
mind, ........ page*^ 

LECTURE V. 

Man's spiritual constitution. Mind more intelligible than matter. Argument 
against materialism. Division of the human faculties into the Intellectual, 
^Esthetic and Moral ; the first made to apprehend Truth ; the second, Beauty ; 
the third, Right. The old error of disparaging the human faculties and the 
human world. "What the intellect has achieved. Science ; common sense. 
The moral tendency of the love of beauty. Conscience : both directive and 
executive. No escape from it. Swifter or slower, but sure to overtake the 
transgressor. The penalty in the sin. Seneca, Plutarch ; Tiberius. The 
general results in human culture ; what the human race has actually at- 
tained, . . . . . . . . .98 

LECTURE VI. 

Man's complex nature. The periods of life : youth, manhood, old age. Society : 
the trying conditions of it considered ; its alleged selfishness and corrupt- 
ing influence ; its competitions ; inequality of lot ; solidarity ; immense 
power of society in moulding the sentiments and character — the great edu- 
cator. The relation of sex, the foundation of the family. Home, the world's 
bond to order and virtue. Balance of opposing powers and tendencies in 
the complex nature of man, . . . . . .118 

LECTURE VII. 

Man considered, first as nature takes him in hand to teach him, and next as 
Providence apprentices him to certain life-tasks. Nature demands of him ac- 
tivity, discretion, care. Her teaching through the sciences. What the tel- 
escope and the microscope reveal. Next, the occupations of life, considered 
as a system of culture. The great visible fact of the world is work. Di- 
vinely appointed, and better for human development than any abstract cul- 
ture. The occupations of life, considered in this view : agriculture, man- 
ufacture or mechanic art, trade, the learned professions — the physician, law- 
yer, divine, teacher ; the arts of expression — authorship, artist life. The 
world's need of such influences, ...... 139 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



LECTURE VIII. 

Against despondency. Man's condition not to be regarded as strange or de- 
pressing. Examination of the interior and trying conditions of human cul- 
ture : free will — imperfection — effort and struggle — penitence or regret for 
failure — illusion — fluctuation — indefiniteness of the process — and the clogs 
and encumbrances that flesh is heir to, in the form of physical infirmity, of the 
sensual passions, of sleep. The apparent ascendency given to intellect over 
virtue and conscience. In fine, the discipline of life involves difficulty and 
trial. Whether something like this must not be the discipline of all moral 
life, in all worlds, ...... page 162 

LECTURE IX. 

Problems in Man's individual life — pain ; hereditary evil ; death. Pain useful — 
teacher of prudence ; a sentinel that warns of danger ; morally necessary and 
ennobling. Hereditary descent of qualities ; no more trying than other gen- 
eral laws ; itself a useful law ; its connection with nationality, and the family 
bond. Death, an evident and original part of the system of the world. The 
death threatened in Scripture " not the going out of the world, but the man- 
ner of going." The isolation of this event, and the pain attending it, consid- 
ered. Its influence upon life ; as an epoch in our moral course — as near — 
as inevitable — as admonitory— as filling the world with touching and sublime 
memorials — as giving a grandeur to life, through confronting and conquer- 
ing it, . . . . . . . . 183 

LECTURE X. 

Historic problems. General view to be taken of the world's life. Plato's view. 
With regard to the bad or defective institutions and usages, religious, po- 
litical, or warlike, that have prevailed in the world, three propositions laid 
down, first: that they have been better than none; secondly, that they have 
been the best that the world could receive ; thirdly, that they have done 
good. The particular systems considered: Polytheism and Idolatry — Des- 
potism — War — and Slavery — and the problem involved in the prevalence and 
ministry of Error, ....... 204 

LECTURE XL 

Historic view of human progress. The manner in which the subject is to be 
studied. Fichte's manner. The underlying principles — human spontaneity 
and divine control. The agencies employed in human progress. First, 
thought, in the forms both of philosophy and popular opinion : its progress 
from the old Asiatic time, through Greece, Rome, and Europe in the Middle 
Ages. Secondly, institutions : Religion, the Hebrew system, the Christian. 
Thirdly, actions and events: Colonization — Invasions — political Revolu- 
tions, . . . . . . . . .227 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



LECTUEE XII. 



Historic view of human progress. Preliminary consideration — that it shows a 
divine purpose rather than any human planning. M. Hello's Philosophy of 
the History of France. Steps of progress : Infancy of the world ; the child- 
hood of civilization was in Southern Asia ; its youth in Greece ; Kome, the 
law-maker and diffuser : The Feudal System : The present age, the world's 
manhood ; not in its latter, but its earlier day. The certainty of prog- 
ress, ....... page 252 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 



LEOTUEE I. 

ON THE CHARACTER, FITNESS, HISTORY, AND CLAIMS OF 
THE INQUIRY. 

Have we any right to ask — is it natural and fit that a 
human being should ask, such questions as these — " Why 
do I exist ? Why am I here ? Why am I such as I am ? 
Why was the world made and arranged as it is? This 
dread mystery of nature and life — what does it mean ? " 

If it is proper to ask such questions, then is there such a 
subject for legitimate discussion, as the problem of human 
destiny. This is the subject on which I am to enter this 
evening, with a view to some preliminary statement of its 
character, of the propriety of discussing it, of its history as 
a subject of thought, and of the natural interest that be- 
longs to it. 

Let me say a word or two of the title by which I have 
announced it ; both for the vindication of the title, and the 
explanation of my purpose. 

My theme, then, is not natural theology, nor, indeed, 
any other theology ; it lies in the more general domain of 
philosophy. Theology, as a science, is the study of the Su- 
preme Nature ; and natural theology is the study of it, in 
what exists, in distinction from what is supernaturally re- 
vealed. The results of this theology I take for granted. I 
1 



2 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

believe in God, in his perfection and providence. But hav- 
ing found the Divinity, I seek to find the humanity, in na- 
ture and life — to find, that is, its place, its function, its voca- 
tion, its destiny. That is to say — having found the divine 
nature, I seek to understand its intent and end in human 
nature ; and by consequence in the material creation as 
ministering to it. After the problem of the Divinity, comes 
by natural and logical sequence the problem of humanity ; 
in fact, it has followed in historical development. The Di- 
vinity was the question of the old Oriental sytems ; the hu- 
manity has been that upon which the Hebrew and Christian, 
have fixed attention. 

Again, the title " philosophy of history " would not suit 
my purpose ; because history deals with nations, and my 
subject embraces, not only national, but social, domestic, 
and individual life. I might call it " the problem of exist- 
ence ; " but that would seem to indicate a more speculative 
theme ; as, for instance, how things came into existence, or 
under what view existence is to be conceived of; and be- 
sides, though it is the problem of all earthly existence that 
is in my mind, yet it centres in humanity ; and therefore I 
say, the problem of human destiny. 

If I should say that " the problem of evil in the world'''' 
is my theme, I should come nearer to the matter in hand ; 
but then I should only point to the cause naturally and im- 
mediately prompting inquiry, not to the whole compass of 
it, nor to its ultimate aim. The aim is to learn what this 
scene of human affairs meaneth ; the compass of the inquiry 
is the whole mingled good and evil of the human lot ; and 
the existence of evil, obviously, is only a part of the theme. 
But doubtless it is evil especially that raises the question, 
that drives us upon it. If all were bright and happy in 
this world, if the steps of men and generations were ever 
onward and upward, were free and buoyant, then there 
would be no problem to try, but only contemplation to de- 
light us. The great wisdom that reigns over the world, 
would, indeed, then, as it must forever, invite our thoughts, 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 3 

but there would be no difficulty, no darkness, no doubt con- 
cerning the human condition. If man had been perfectly 
happy and pure, he would never have questioned his lot, 
nor struggled for the solution of its mysteries. But how is 
it now ? The steps of humanity have been slow and heavy, 
and apparently backward at times ; stumbling and weari- 
ness and sorrow have been in the path ; dark clouds have 
hung over the way of generations, and men and nations 
have struggled with one another in the darkness ; and the 
experience of every thoughtful human being, has pressed 
home upon him the question, "What means this troubled 
scene of things ? In other words, what is the reigning and 
ultimate aim that lies behind it ? 

What, then, is the reigning and ultimate aim that lies 
behind ? This is our question. Is there any presumption 
in seeking to know what it is ? Observe, that it does not 
answer our question to say that infinite love is the principle 
from which all things have sprung. What does that love 
aim to accomplish ? I say, again, may we not humbly ask ? 
There is a sort of mock modesty, mixed with philosophic 
pride, in comparing man seeking to comprehend the moral 
system of the world, to a fly upon a great wheel, seeking to 
know why it revolves, and for what end. The profes- 
sion of ignorance may be prouder than the profession of 
knowledge. It is evident, I think, that Socrates himself 
felt more pride than humility, in professing to know noth- 
ing. For my part, I do not claim to be one of the philoso- 
phers, and am so unpretending as to profess that I do know 
something about our nature and condition, and what they 
mean. It would be strange, I think, if to the grandest and 
most importunate questioning of intelligent natures, there 
were no answer. In the humblest manufactory, a man 
could not live his day's life, but in misery and distraction, 
if he did not know what was going on there. And can he 
live this life, of vaster breadth and wider relations — this 
life, that " is sounding on its dim and perilous way " 
through the years of time, and consent to know nothing of 



4 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

the sublime processes that are going on here ? — nothing of 
that great plan, that binding unity amidst boundless diver- 
sity, which alone makes of the universe an intelligent order 
and a goodly system ? 

My belief is, that this great and irresistible impulse of 
our nature to inquire into these things, is not given to be 
balked by heaven, nor scorned by man. My belief is, that 
this high questioning does admit of some answer. The cele- 
brated statesman and Oriental scholar, William Humboldt, 
has said, " the world-history is not without an intelligible 
world-government." And this declaration is placed as a 
motto at the head of a philosophy of history, commonly 
thought to be sufficiently sceptical ; I mean the German 
Hegel's. And sceptical enough it is. But while Hegel 
recognizes only an impersonal Reason as ruling in the 
world, nothing is more remarkable in his work, than to see 
how he traces everywhere in the history of the world, the 
thread of a design and a destiny, as distinct and determi- 
nate, as if it were everywhere drawn and held fast by a 
personal "Will, — a hint, by the bye, of what is often con- 
firmed by the study of philosophy, — that seeming atheism in 
the contemplation of the world, is often obliged to deny it- 
self and to acknowledge a providence. 

Our problem, then, is the world-problem ; in short, it 
really is the problem of human destiny. I confess that I 
still feel some objection to this description of my theme ; it 
is a more sounding title than I like. Not, however, that it 
is presumptuous ; because presumption, surely, must be out 
of the question here / modesty, I think, is to be taken for 
granted on such a subject ; the very greatness of the prob- 
lem — the vastness of the treasure-house to which we resort, 
is an argument, nay, and a kind of warrant, at once for ear- 
nestness and humility. Everybody may go to the mines of 
California for gold, because they are so vast and exhaust- 
less ; and yet, for the same reason, nobody expects to get 
more than a small share of it. And so in the field of our 
inquiry — if one may pick up a few of the golden sands on 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 5 

this shore of boundless and mysterious wealth, it is well ; 
and well may it engage his attention. 

I have adopted the title problem of human destiny, then, 
for the simple reason that it better expresses and sets forth, 
than any other which has occurred to me, the object I have 
in view. A problem is something proposed, laid down — 
thrown out, as we familiarly say, — for examination. The 
Greek root from which it comes, nrpofiaXkw, from fidXkco, to 
throw, suggests, in fact, the very figure. A problem is a 
ball thrown out, to be unwound, unravelled. And the sub- 
ject which is presented in this kind of investigation, is the 
strangely mingled web of human destiny. It is, indeed, if 
I may say so, this ball of earth, around which ages have 
wound their many-colored tissues, tissues of savage and civil- 
ized life, of political institutions and social usages, of litera- 
ture and art, of law, science, and religion ; tissues woven out 
of human hearts, and steeped in all the bright and all the 
sombre dyes of human experience ; tissues which have 
clothed the earth, bare and naked at first, with countless 
memories, traditions, histories, associations, sentiments, 
affections — which have, in fact, given the term world a 
human sense, which have made it mean a very different 
thing from the bare word, earth ; tissues, in fine, broken and 
torn by outbreak, revolution, war, violence, or bound and 
knotted fast by despotism, caste, serfdom, slavery, — and in- 
termingled and intertwisted in a thousand ways ; and yet 
in which there is not one thread, laid by the Divine hand, 
that has not, as I believe, been drawing on to a sublime 
destiny. 

To a sublime destiny, I say : and what is that ? And 
where is it to be looked for ? Is it in the original nucleus 
of the world, the mere material ball of earth ? Is it in the 
sea, with its waves, or in the land, with its harvests — the 
dust beneath our feet ? Is it in the ever-returning circuits of 
the seasons ? Can you take any product of nature — flower 
or diamond, Andes or India — and say, " To form this, and 
such as this, was the end of all things " ? No ; instantly. 



6 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

intuitively, we say, no ; where there is a destiny, there must 
be an experience, a consciousness of it ; in our humanity only 
is the problem of this world's existence solved ; in our hu- 
manity alone is there end or explanation ; man is the world, 
and the world is man. 

But let us look into this matter a little more closely, 
with a view to state more fully what is proposed as the sub- 
ject of these Lectures, and more fully to legitimate this 
kind of inquiry. 

You will remember, many of you, the opening observa- 
tion of Dr. Paley in his Natural Theology, in which he sup- 
poses a man, in crossing a heath, to find a watch. He 
argues that the finder, on examining the mechanism, and 
discovering the purpose which it was designed to answer, 
would say, " somebody made it." He applies this reason- 
ing to the world, which exhibits more design by far than a 
watch ; and argues from effect to Cause, from design to a 
Designer, from the intelligence displayed in the universe to 
an intelligent Creator. And it seems to me that the argu- 
ment would have been stronger if it had not taken the form 
of argument at all ; statement here is argument ; because 
design not merely proves, but implies a designer ; just as 
action implies an actor, or a thing's being made implies a 
maker. You cannot say, " here is a design," without in- 
cluding in your thought, " here is a designer," any more 
than you can conceive of speech without a speaker. The 
world, the universe, is the utterance, the word, the expres- 
sion of a mind. 

There has manifested itself of late, in some quarters, a 
disposition to discredit this argument from design. In Ger- 
many has been revived the old theory of Plotinus and Iam- 
blicus — for it is far older than Berkeley — that the world 
does not exist at all, but in our thought. Our inborn ideas, 
says Fichte, projected into space, are the universe. The 
world is but an idea ; the world-creator is the mind. But 
this, if it were true, would only bring the argument from 
design out of nature into hiwianity— into this more aston- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. f 

ishmg realm of creative thought. Did this wonderful mind 
— world-creating, as they say it is — did this mind then cre- 
ate itself? Others have said, that the creation, not being 
infinite, cannot prove an infinite Creator. But if the Cre- 
ator of this world or of the solar system, were imagined to 
be a finite and dependent creature, who, then, created him f 
The steps of this preposterous scepticism, alike lead us back 
to an infinite and independent Cause. 

This is not the place for any elaborate discussion of the 
question, how it is that we come to be possessed with this 
great conviction of the existence of a God ; whether by ar- 
guments drawn from within, or from without us ; or wheth- 
er by no argument, — the conviction being the impress upon 
our very nature, of the great hand that formed it. I will 
only say that if any instructed man can look upon himself 
or upon the universe around him ; if he can ascend and 
dwell in thought amidst the countless millions of stars, or 
if he can take into his scope but the breadth of a summer's 
day, from the time when it touches the eastern hills with 
fire, to its soft and fading close ; all its loveliness, its wealth 
and wonder of beauty, its domain crowded with thousand- 
fold life, — life clothing the mountain side, springing in the 
valley, singing and making melody though all the round 
of earth, and air, and waters ; or if he can take any little 
plot of ground by his side, and study all its vegetable 
growth and insect life, and all that it drinks in from foster- 
ing nature around, all that it borrows from the ocean deep, 
and from the pavilion of the sun, to deck its flowery mar- 
gin ; if, in a word, any instructed man can read the hand- 
writing that is written all over the great tablet of the uni- 
verse, and not feel that it expresses a Mind — an Intelligence, 
a Wisdom, a love unbounded and unspeakable, he it is not 
to whom I speak : and well may I judge that there is no 
such man here, nor anywhere. Why, if one found inscribed 
upon some Eosetta stone, or upon the ribbed rocks of a des- 
ert mountain, but five such sentences as I am now uttering, 
he would say, without any doubt, " Some intelligent being 



8 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

has done this ; some mind placed these words thus, one 
after another." And does the infinite volume of the uni- 
verse give less assurance of a devising Intelligence ? Good 
heaven ! I am tempted to say, what sort of stupid mystifi- 
cation is it, that leads any man to deny that such a universe 
as this, expresses a Mind, and a Purpose % 

But there being manifest design in the universe, and 
therefore a designing Mind, the question arises, "What is this 
design % In other words, what is the end proposed in the 
creation ? "What may we believe that the infinite Creator 
intended to accomplish by the creation of this world, and 
of the beings and things upon it ? And this question arises 
naturally and irresistibly ; we cannot help asking it. Thus 
— to adopt the manner of Dr. Paley in the passage just re- 
ferred to — if I were to bring here and place before you a 
lump of cl ay or a piece of marble, no inquiry might arise in 
your minds concerning it, unless it were the general ques- 
tion, why I had brought it here ? But if I should bring 
and place before you an exquisite and beautiful piece of 
mechanism, that kind of vague question would not suffice, 
but you would especially and immediately ask, concerning 
this mechanism, what is it for ? Is it to plane wood, or to 
print books, or to generate light and heat % What is it 
made for? And when this question was answered, you 
would as irresistibly ask, how does it accomplish its pur- 
pose % If it were a very complex instrument, you would have 
many questions to ask ; as how this wheel, or that lever, this 
pulley, or that weight, helps on the general design. 

Now, the frame of the world, the frame of our body, the 
frame of the soul, in other words, the whole system of na- 
ture and life and moral agency, is such a mechanism ? 

I do not suppose it is necessary to say anything to prove 
this point. The phrases in constant use — system of nature, 
system of the world, order of the universe, plan of the crea- 
tion — recognize the doctrine and allow us to take it for 
granted. Every step in science opens a deeper insight into 
the wonderful and beautiful order of nature ; the scientific 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 9 

explorer sees in the world a vast manufactory, filled with 
instruments and agencies, far more complicated and exqui- 
site than the wheels and levers, the bands and pulleys, that 
weave the most splendid fabrics of human art. But every 
man who sees how this vast vegetable growth that covers 
the earth, ministers to innumerable living creatures, includ- 
ing the human race, sees a sublime order in nature. The 
earth, he cannot but see, is a bountiful table, spread and 
evermore replenished, by day and by night, for countless 
tribes of creatures. They come and go ; they sleep and 
wake, without care ; " they toil not, neither do they spin ; 
they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ; " 
unbounded millions of creatures, with incessant wants, and 
no intelligence in themselves to supply those wants ; but 
what then ? There is an intelligence that provides for them. 
There is a bounty that feeds them. Each one finds his place 
and his position in the boundless feast. Each one has a set 
of organs, an apparatus, to assimilate the food to his nature, 
and convert it to his growth ; a mouth to break it up, to 
grind it like a mill ; the stomach to digest, i. e., to amalga- 
mate it with elements of animal life, and other organs to 
modify the supply — to dissolve and refine it, to bolt it, as 
it were, and cast away the chaff, while the pure nourish- 
ment is conveyed by ducts and channels innumerable, to 
every part of the system. Whoever knows this, knows that 
there is order in nature. It is true that we are less sensible 
of it, because we grow up amidst it ; and many of its pro- 
cesses, too, are out of sight. I suppose, if there were ma- 
chines in nature to make bones and build skeletons, and 
then, if there were other machines — gins to spin the hollow 
arteries and veins, and looms to weave the muscular fibre 
and the corded nerves, and founderies to mould the beating 
heart and the breathing lungs ; and other contrivances still, 
for putting all the parts together, for setting up the frame 
and laying in the engines and the pipes, and putting on the 
integuments, and finishing off the man, like a statue — I sup- 
pose, I say, that many would be more impressed by all this 



10 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

visible mechanism. But it would be all coarse and clumsy 
compared with, that which now exists, and would be far less 
indicative of an order and plan in the world. 

But now, when we say there is order, there is a plan in 
the world, what precisely do we mean by that % "We mean 
precisely that there is an arrangement of parts with a view 
to an end. An end, and means to an end — these are the 
two component elements of what we mean by intelligent 
order. I say intelligent order. A child or an idiot may 
place a hundred sticks parallel to each other, and this would 
be a sort of order. But in the order of nature we see the 
parts, the means, i. e., conspiring to an end. 

The end and the means, then — these are the points 
which we are brought to inquire into ; these are the proper 
subjects of all high philosophy of our humanity, of history, 
and of the world, as the sphere of their development. 

Our present inquiry is for the end. Let us look into 
this order of nature, then, and see if it does not, by very 
plain indications, lead us to a result — to a conclusion, that 
is to say, on the point which we have before us. "We see 
subordinate aims in nature ; let us see if they do not con- 
duct us to an ultimate aim. 

Herder commences his celebrated work on the " Philos- 
ophy of Humanity," by considering the world which we 
inhabit, in its primitive nature and relations. He devotes 
several chapters to such propositions as these : that the 
earth is one of the heavenly bodies ; that it is a planet ; 
that it passed through many revolutions before it came to 
its present form and condition ; that it turns on its axis ; 
that it is enveloped with an atmosphere, &c. He then pro- 
ceeds to consider the geographical relations of the earth, 
and especially of its plains and mountain ranges, to human 
development. Other writers have followed in the same 
track. It would seem that philosophy, like Antseus, must 
touch the earth, to be strong. 

I do not think it necessary, with my present view, to go 
back so far, or to take so wide a compass ; something of this 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. ±± 

I reserve for future consideration, especially the geographi- 
cal relation. For the present, 1 wish to direct your atten- 
tion to the simple point of organic growth in the world, 
and see to what it will lead us. You must allow me to do 
this in as few words as possible. 

The basis of all is the soil. If the earth were a ball of 
solid iron or granite, there would be no soil, and no growth. 
It is formed of other materials, of other materials, i. e., com- 
bined with these ; and this, plainly, for an end : to produce 
trees, groves, the cedar of Lebanon, the hyssop that spring- 
eth by the wall, the herb yielding seed, the waving harvest 
— the whole vegetable growth of the world, a harvest for 
innumerable creatures. And this is the purpose answered 
by the soil. There is much to be said, and which we shall 
find occasion to say, of this basis and beginning of all 
growth and life on earth, this vast bed of raw material for 
all the varied fabric and workmanship of nature. 

But look now a moment at this workmanship. Inlaid 
in every vegetable structure, air-cells and sap-vessels, to 
nourish its growth, and to produce fibre, flower, and seed ; 
varied forms of structure — the wheat straw hollow, because 

the 
tim- 
ber, nor be as valuable for fuel ; the fruit-bearing shrubs, 
like the blackberry, commonly provided with prickles, to 
defend them, or with small tough leaves, like the huckle- 
berry, which do not invite the browsing herd ; the esculent 
shrubs, herbs, and grasses, not so armed, because that would 
be fatal to the end ; the orchard, the garden, the meadow, 
the pasture, the shady grove, — what is all this but a minis- 
tration of food and refreshment and beauty to the whole 
animal and human creation ? 

Observe, next, the animal creation. I do not say that it 
was made solely for man. It existed before man. It has 
an end proper to itself; a certain amount of enjoyment 
which, though lower, is more unalloyed than that of the 
human race. 



12 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

Still, we see that it is mainly subservient to man. It 
furnishes him with food and raiment ; it relieves his 
labor, and ministers to his pleasure. Some animals 
were evidently designed to be domesticated by man and 
to do him kindly and patient service — the horse, the 
ox, the camel, the dog. But of what use to him, it may 
be said, are the lion and tiger ? I answer, of none, per- 
haps ; but they are, at least, subject and subordinate to 
him in this sense, that where man comes, they disappear. 
They occupy, by the bounty of the Creator, a space which 
man does not want ; a space which, perhaps, as in the in- 
stance of the deserts of Africa, he never will want ; but 
whenever he does need the domain of these creatures, wild, 
untamable, and useless to him, their claim yields to his. 
They are made to live for him, or to perish for him, as he 
has occasion. 

To man, then, we come at last in the ascending scale, 
and there is nothing higher ; of this earthly creation, that 
is to say, he is the head. But in man, again, we see a 
double nature — a material frame, and something that is not 
material. To the material frame the lower creation directly 
ministers as cause. The vegetable and animal creation, that 
is to say, supplies to it food, without which it could not 
grow nor live. But is the body the end, the crowning glory 
of the world ? Evidently it is not. Evidently it ministers 
to the soul. Its senses, appetites, and passions are all en- 
gaged in this ministry. To show this fully will require in- 
deed some larger discourse. At present I am indicating 
only the steps of the ascent. But look a moment at the 
five senses in this view. Suppose a body in its general 
frame like that which we now possess, but without the 
senses, and the soul imprisoned in that body. What, then, 
do we see ? What is done for it % Why it is let out — if 1 
may say so — through touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing. 
For what end ? Plainly for its delight, its culture, its grow- 
ing knowledge. The senses are the specific organs of the 
soul. Their office is finer than that of the stomach, the 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 13 

liver, the lungs. These are but laborers in the comparison. 
The senses are artists. And as their office is finer, it is they 
that must have repose and relief. It is they only that sleep. 
The stomach, the lungs, the heart, do not sleep ; they labor 
on, without pause or rest. These are servants. They keep 
the house of life in order and repair, that the inhabitant 
within, may have leisure and freedom to do his own proper 
work — to think, to meditate, to gaze upon the glories of the 
creation ; to build up systems of science, philosophy, and 
art ; to build up himself in that culture which is the end 
of all. 

Nor does it. conflict with this conclusion to say, that at 
every step, correlative ends are accomplished for their own 
sake. Nature is filled with lavish beauty and enjoyment ; 
but still it points to an end. The stream overflows on every 
hand, but still there is a stream. Thus, in human life, I 
see a thousand gratuitous enjoyments ; but I see, too, a 
higher and sublimer purpose. Thus the human body is a 
machine for work ; but it is also a shrine for indwelling 
wisdom and devotion. 

The Greek word for man, avdpcoiros, is composed of two 
words (ava Qopico), which signify to look upward. Man is 
made to look upward. The ultimate end of all things on 
earth, is to form a being, filled with all nobleness and beau- 
ty, filled with virtue, wisdom, piety. The world-system is 
a pyramid of which humanity is the top. The broad earth, 
the vast substructure of soil, is the base. On it repose the 
layers and rounds, many and beautiful, of the vegetable 
creation. Next rise the orders of animal life. Above all, 
humanity, with its various component parts — some lower, 
some higher : — the digestive or building apparatus and the 
sentient organs ; perception, memory, imagination, that 
gathers and moulds the stores of cognate facts ; judgment 
that compares them, and the consequent grasp of general 
truth ; and, above all, and ministered to by all, the spiritu- 
alized soul, the divine reason — that united intelligence and 
love, which gathers strength from all that is below, to rise 



14 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

to all that is above ; which communes with heaven, with 
eternity, with God ! 

In this comparison, let it be observed that I describe the 
system of the world as it actually exists ; as a system of 
relations, dependencies, connections running through the 
whole. If it were otherwise ; if the vegetable kingdom stood 
completely distinct from the animal, and the animal from 
the human, then we might say that each one was made for 
ends proper, peculiar, limited to itself. But when we trace, 
throughout the system of the world, a connection and de- 
pendency as manifest as in any human machinery, as in 
that, for instance, by which wool is carded for the spindle, 
and spun for the loom, and woven for the fuller and dyer, 
to make cloth — we see in both alike an ultimate end. In 
the world-system, man is the end ; and the highest in man 
is the ultimate end ; that is, his virtue, his sanctity, his like- 
ness to God. 

Let me offer an observation in passing, upon the com- 
parison which I have just used. There are some things in 
that process of making cloth, which, taken by themselves, 
not seen in their relations, seem very little to contribute to 
the desired result. They seem, in fact, to hinder and thwart 
the end. The material that is to be woven into a firm tex- 
ture is, in the process of fabrication, rudely dealt with — 
pulled, and strained, and torn in pieces. A pure and shin- 
ing fabric is to be made, fit for the array of princes ; but 
soil, and damage, and discoloration, are a part of the pro- 
cess. So may the shining robes of virtue be fashioned. So 
may human affections be torn and riven. So may there be, 
in human life, many a hard struggle and strain, in order to 
come to the end. 

Conceive now, on the whole, and yet more distinctly, 
of the highest thing in our humanity — what it is. It is 
not comfort, nor ease, nor pleasure ; it is not birth, nor 
station, nor magnificent fortunes ; it is not nobility, nor 
kingship, nor imperial sway. It is something more no- 
ble, in the mind; more kingly, more imperial, than all 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 15 

this. Conceive of a human being ; what he is, and how it 
is with him, when he challenges your purest admiration ; 
when unbidden tears start from your eyes as you think of 
him ; when you, with all mankind, unite to consecrate and 
canonize his worth. Is earthly splendor or fortune, or is 
mere earthly happiness, any part of his claim ? So far from 
that, it is when he stands alone, in the majesty of self-sub- 
sistent virtue ; it is when he suffers for principle, and sinks 
and goes down with the last plank that honor has left him ; 
it is when he wears himself out in unshared labors of phi- 
lanthropy ; it is when he dies for his country or for man- 
kind — ay, rent and torn in pieces on the rack and the 
scaffold ; it is then that he is noblest in your eyes. This 
highest in man, all that is highest and holiest, I believe, is 
the end of Providence ; and it is my aim in these lectures 
to show how it is that Providence is ever promoting this 
end. 

I have thus explained my design, and endeavored to 
justify it — to legitimate this kind of inquiry. 

I cannot doubt that this is a subject of immense interest 
to all reflecting persons. The history of thought itself on 
this subject, would be one of immense interest. In the early 
ages of the world, indeed, there may have been but little 
thought about it ; as we see there is but little now, in the 
earlier stages of our own life. And yet I cannot help be- 
lieving, that in the mysterious depths of our humanity, this 
inquiry has always been dimly shadowed forth, even amidst 
barbarian ignorance ; that the man who turned from the 
glare of day to his shaded Scythian tent or Bactrian hut, 
smitten down by the bitter strife of passion or sorrow, some- 
times said with himself, " Wherefore is all this ? "Why am I 
made thus, and to what end ? " But doubtless this inquiry 
has slowly developed itself with the progress of the world ; 
and the history of it would be found to mark the steps of all 
human progress. It arose dimly in the old Hindoo, Chinese, 
and Persian systems of religion and philosophy. It struck 
far deeper roots into the Hebrew spiritualism. It occupied 



16 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

the thoughts of the Grecian and Roman sages. It has re- 
vealed itself in modern times in the more distinct forms of 
a philosophy of history, and a philosophy of humanity. It 
has swelled and deepened its channel through all the fields 
of human thought ; history, philosophy, science, literature, 
are all more and more occupied with the question, what do 
all things mean ? No question, I believe, has sunk so deep- 
ly into the cultivated mind of the modern world. And 
when, some twenty or thirty years ago, the Rev. and Earl 
of Bridgewater left a bequest of £8,000 as a prize for the 
best work on this subject, I believe it was widely felt that 
the sum was worthily bestowed, and that this specific direc- 
tion of it, had touched the very theme of the age. It has 
been well said, I think, by one of the eloquent philosophers 
of France, Jouffroi, that this point of destiny, this object 
and end of being, is the very point about which all true 
poetry, philosophy, and religion have revolved — poetry, 
with its lofty sadness, with its visions and dreams of moral 
beauty, with its longings for better times on earth, and 
blessed regions in heaven ; philosophy, with its profound 
and painful inquiries after the all-embracing, all-harmoniz- 
ing result of human weal and woe ; and religion, as it stands 
on the heights of the world, and speaks with authority from 
God, and faith in eternity. 

It may be said, what need we more, since we have such 
a revelation? I answer, our having a Bible does not pre- 
clude us from preaching about it ; our having a faith does 
not forbid our inquiring into it, and seeking for its con- 
firmation ; our receiving the facts of a revelation rather in- 
clines us to study the philosophy of those facts. I may 
believe, as I do believe, that all the conditions of this life 
are designed and arranged to advance in us the highest 
culture ; but how they fulfil their mission is a wide question, 
and into this question I propose thoughtfully and reverently 
to enter. 

But let us go back a moment to the history of this great 
inquiry. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 17 

All the religions in the world have recognized this 
grand problem of human destiny. They have contemplated 
man as having a destiny beyond the little ronnd of his 
daily pursuits ; beyond earthly weal and woe, beyond the 
sphere of this world's kingdoms and empires. They have 
lifted up the dark curtain of time, on which the shows and 
glories, the battles and disasters of this world, are pictured, 
and pointed the busy actors to a solemn audit beyond. 
Everlasting repose, Elysian fields, or fair hunting grounds, 
have awaited them ; or Tartarus, Tophet, Gehenna, and 
blackness of darkness. 

The old Egyptian Sacerdotalism had an institution con- 
nected with the burial of the dead, which brought out this 
fact of a spiritual destination for men, into visible and im- 
pressive significance. The disposal of the body with the 
Egyptians, let it be remembered, was closely connected 
with the final state of the soul. They embalmed the body 
in the belief that the soul would return to it, after a wan- 
dering or metempsychosis of three thousand years. The 
institution to which I refer was this. On the banks of the 
lake Acherusia, sat a tribunal of forty-two judges, to 
examine into the life of all who were brought for burial in 
the great cemetery on the other side. In this examination 
no regard was to be paid to the rank or riches of the de- 
ceased, but only to his character, to his virtues or vices. If 
the result was favorable, his remains were conveyed in a 
boat to the Elisout or place of rest ; if otherwise, they were 
cast into a deep trench, called Tartar — place of lamenta- 
tions. Transferred to the Greek mythology, we find all this 
in Charon, his ferry-boat, Tartarus and the Elysian fields. 

In the religious system of the Persians, among whom 
Hegel traces a development entitling them in his opinion 
to be called the earliest historical people — in the Zend- 
avesta of Zoroaster, that is to say, we find the mind of the 
author and the age, laboring with the problem of evil, and 
striving to meet it. Evil is in the world ; how came it 
here? From the All-good, nothing but good could come; 
2 



18 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

whence came the evil ? Two principles, teaches the Zend- 
avesta, reign over the world : Ormuzd, Light ; and Ahri- 
man, Darkness. From the accursed Ahriraan comes all 
evil ; not physical evil alone, as " winter and vermin," but 
;" reprehensible doubt, and magic, and the false worship of 
Peris, and that which poisons men's hearts." Ormuzd, 
however, is the more powerful principle; and in twelve 
thousand years shall gain the victory." * 

In the Hebrew Religion we find deeper traces of this 
great inquiry. The book of Ecclesiastes is a remarkable ac- 
count of the questionings and stragglings of the mind upon 
this point. Throughout the largest portion of the work, 
the wise man of Israel appears as a sceptic and a satirist ; 
he sees no high end for man; he sees no fitness in the con- 
ditions of life, to promote such an end ; wealth and poverty, 
honor and shame, nay, science and ignorance, wisdom and 
folly, seem alike purposeless and useless : " vanity of van- 
ities, all is vanity," is the burden of the teaching; and 
man is commended to eating and drinking and enjoying 
himself as he may ; seemingly after a very reckless fashion. 
Then again the high and righteous aim is set before him, 
and God's favor and help are promised to him as his secu- 
rity and strength. So that to explain the book, the learned 
Eichhorn was led to adopt the theory that it is a dialogue, 
in which the sceptic and the believer are brought forward 
by the writer, to express their conflicting views ; though 
there certainly are no marks of dialogue in the work, and 
it seems unnecessary to suppose in the case anything 
more than the stragglings of a single mind, after some clue 
to this maze of human passions and pursuits. Every man's 
thought is a dialogue. 

In our Christian writings there is one book, Paul's 
Epistle to the Romans, which distinctly brings forward the 
same question. Eirst, the great and universal fact of human 
imperfection, of human misery, is laid down ; next the mis- 

* Zendavesta, quoted by Heeren, Appendix I., in the 2d vol. on Asiatic 
Nations. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 19 

sion of Christ to a weak and wandering and sin-burthened 
race. These subjects, with some digressions, occupy the 
first six chapters. In the next chapter, Paul enters more 
particularly into the distress of the case, describes the 
struggle with sin and sorrow, and ends with the exclamation, 
" Oh wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me ? " In 
the ninth chapter he speaks in encouraging and even exult- 
ing terms of a triumph. Man, it is true, " is subject to vani- 
ty," i. e. to dissatisfaction, weariness and pain ; not willing- 
ly — life's burthens he would fain escape — but at the will 
of Him who hath subjected the same in hope. That is, 
for a good end, the Supreme Will hath placed him here ; the 
case is hopeful ; the destiny is noble, though fraught with ele- 
ments of trial, strife and sorrow. Through strife and sorrow, 
the victory is to be gained. Man is " saved by hope." His 
state is one not of attainment, but of expectation, of pro- 
gress. The great futurity forever draws him on. He does 
not see all that he seeks for. He struggles on through imper- 
fection, uncertainty, darkness, error. Only by these, only 
by a battle does he gain the victory. This is the theory of 
his condition. 

The thread of our inquiry, which runs through the whole 
course of philosophy, I have not time now to trace. Plato 
took it up again and again, and Aristotle ; and after them, 
Zeno, and Epicurus, and even Pyrrho, the doubter — each 
after his own fashion. The new Platonic school in the 
third century, seems to me to have framed its theories with 
distinct, if not ultimate reference to this question. Plotinus, 
Jamblicus and Proclus cast scorn upon the present life and 
all its objects ; and as the true end for man, strove to live 
above it, in a certain divine contemplation and ecstasy. In 
the early part of the eighteenth century, John Baptiste Yico 
of Naples, in his "Nuova Scienza," first expounded as a 
new science, the philosophy of history. Herder, Pichte and 
Hegel in Germany have labored in the same field. In 
France, Auguste Comte, in his great work, entitled "Philo- 
sophic Positive," has undertaken the herculean, task of an 



20 OX THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

appreciation of the whole course and progress of human 
thought and history. 

Mr. Buckle's Introductory Volumes on " the History of 
Civilization in England" have been added to the works I 
have mentioned — in some respects the most remarkable of 
them all. Failing on the moral side — denying freedom to 
the mind, and of course denying all proper moral influence 
in human affairs, it is at the same time such an account of 
the intellectual, scientific, political and material causes of 
human development and progress, that I know of nothing 
comparable to it, in the treatment of that branch of the sub- 
ject. It is the more strange, that Mr. Buckle should have 
ignored the moral element — it is positively a phenomenon in 
literature — because his own mind was full of the very force 
that he denied ; hardly anywhere is to be found a keener in- 
dignation at wrong, or a more eloquent espousal of human 
rights, or urging of human duties. In America, we have — 
still more recently — one most creditable contribution to the 
same general subject, in Dr. Draper's work on the Intellec- 
tual Development in Europe ; in which the author seeks to 
show, though the point is sometimes almost lost sight of in 
the admirable and splendid array of facts, that this devel- 
opment is never uncertain or fortuitous in the causes or 
processes that lead to it, but always strictly dependent on 
law. 

This brief allusion to the history of our theme, shows that 
it has been encompassed with doubt and difficulty. There are 
two lines in our great dramatist, that express the feeling of 
the sceptic and the scorner with almost terrific point and 
energy. Life, he says, 

" Life is a tale, 
Told by an idiot ; full of sound and fury, ( 

Signifying nothing." 

There is a sound of the wayward and mad world some- 
times in our ears, that seems to answer to that description. 
There are spectacles of failure, defeat, moral disaster, and 
miserable degradation, that sorely try the better faith. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 21 

Alas ! we say, perhaps, is there any end for man — for man, 
the victim of absurd institutions, the sport of untoward cir- 
cumstances, the burden-bearer, the slave; for man, baffled, 
thwarted, worn down with tasks, beguiled by illusions, 
wandering after phantoms, — is there any end for man ? 
"Was he made for anything high, great, ultimate? Is there 
a power above that guides him, and that has appointed 
such an end for him, and the means to that end ? Is there 
any contemplation of our sin-stricken humanity, in which 
all that composes its mysterious frame and fortunes can 
find a mission and a destiny ? Life is a bewildering scene ; 
is there any clue to it? It is a changeful and often tragic 
drama ; is there any tendency, any plan, any plot in it ? It 
is a tale of strange things : has it any moral ? 

This is no idle or curious question. It is vital, and it is 
imperative. It is not given to us to choose whether we 
shall he, and shall be such as we are. Suppose a man is 
angry with his lot — angry with the world and with himself 
— with his nature, his freedom, his remorse, his life-long 
struggle, and says he does not care, and will not yield. 
"What then? Down upon him, and upon his very frame 
and fate, sink the silent and everlasting laws : and there is 
no escape. Still the question of destiny presses upon him, 
and there is no discharge from the great bond of his nature 
and condition. 

It is experience that is involved in this question. It is 
the life-experiment of every human being. The issue of 
the experiment is not merely future and everlasting, but 
now, day by day, it comes out — out from every event, 
exigency, situation, pursuit, engagement — the absolute, 
distilled essence of good or ill for us. Can it come to 
good ? "Was it meant for that ? . 

It is a wide-reaching experiment ; it embraces every- 
thing ; can it all come to good \ 

" The whips and scorns of time, 
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, 



22 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

The insolence of office, and the spurns 
That patient merit of the unworthy takes," — 

is it all to be reckoned in the good account ? 

It is a diversified experiment; it seems often strange, 
confused and purposeless ; there are doubtless high traits in 
it, but it seems often poor, paltry and low. "What conflict- 
ing elements mingle in it ! — melancholy and gladness, 
laughter and tears, solemn intent and wayward levity ! 
Can any lines be descried, stretching through this field, ap- 
parently of wide waste and disorder, and pointing to a 
happy issue? In all its diversified states — of youth, of 
manhood, and of old age, of sex, parentage, childhood, 
home, neighborhood, community — is it good? 

It is an experiment of depth and reality — enough, far 
enough, from being indifferent to any who knows it. Stern, 
inexorable, overwhelming at times, is the lot of our being, 
take it as we will. Beneath the smooth surface of life, 
under the mask of pride or politeness, how many a fierce 
battle is fought, or bitter sorrow endured ! What raging 
passion, dark intrigue, brooding discontent, despite, shame, 
sorrow ! Like the black cloud beneath a smiling sky, like 
the lightning in that cloud, so oftentimes is the heart of 
man. Oh, could we say that " with like beneficent effect," 
sorrow gathers and broods, and passion darts its fires ! 

Could I but see that life is a school — all of it, altogether, 
and always ; that all the homes of life are full of divine in- 
struction ; full, not of petty details alone, but of sublime in- 
strumentalities ; that eating and drinking and waking and 
sleeping, are not accidents but ordinances ; that labor and 
weariness, and the tending of infancy, and the sports of 
childhood, and the voice of singing, and the making merry, 
and the feeling sad and low and heavy-hearted, are all min- 
istrations to an end, and are actually doing something to bring 
it about — that would be an optimism, which would clear up 
to me the troubled brow of life, would renovate the face of 
the world. 

But I must not pursue this subject any farther at 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 23 

present. In my next Lecture I must consider the dread 
problem of evil ; whence it sprang, or in what light it is to 
be regarded : for this lies at the foundation of my whole 
theory of life. 

One word more let me say in close : The advocate 
before a jury, or the speaker in a deliberative assembly, has 
one great and singular advantage, in that he addresses those 
who, in common with himself, have something to clo ; who 
must share his labor, to come to a decision. Most other as- 
semblies are full. of passive hearers, content if they are en- 
tertained. Indeed in our popular lyceums, and in our po- 
pular literature too, entertainment is the thing so especially, 
if not exclusively demanded, that the speaker, the writer, is 
led to select the most salient points, and often to pass over to- 
pics and details less attractive, but of the utmost importance 
to his subject. Now I do not want such passive hearers; 
and I cannot pursue any such holiday course. I must 
descend to humble, pains-taking details, when the subject 
requires it. Indeed, Gentlemen and Ladies, I am afraid 
I must weary you sometimes, for your profit. In short, if 
you will permit me to say so, I desire to establish between 
you and me for the time, the friendly compact of persons 
giving their minds to a common task ; together seeking to 
understand a vast and momentous subject, on which the 
stability, peace and happiness of all thinking minds clo 
much depend. 

I am not sorry that the place and occasion require me 
to make this a popular theme. I am to speak, not for phi- 
sophers, but for the people. I wish to meet the questions 
which arise in all minds, that have awaked to any degree 
of reflection upon their nature and being, and upon the 
collective being of their race. I have hoped that I should 
escape the charge of presumption, by the humbleness of my 
attempt — the attempt, that is to say, to popularize a theme 
which has hitherto been the domain of scholars. 



LECTTTKE II. 

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. THE CASE PRESENTED, THE THE- 
■ ORY OFFERED, AND THE BEARING OF IT CONSIDERED. 

I forewarn you that this is the longest, and perhaps 
the least entertaining Lecture that I have to deliver to yon. 
I have to grapple with a hard problem, and I ask your close 
and careful attention. "We shall go on more easily when 
we get through with this. 

I am to consider, in this Lecture, the problem of evil in 
the world. In doing this, I shall first state the case ; next 
propound the theory which I have to offer, and thirdly 
consider the bearing of this theory upon our future in- 
quiries, — or the principles by which, under this theory, we 
must abide. 

First. I am to state the case ; what the problem is ; what 
is the degree, extent, and pressure of evil. 

It is often said that this life is a mystery, that this world 
is a mystery ; and I confess that I am so sensible of a feel- 
ing of this kind, that I am so haunted with it, and as it 
seems to me sometimes, so strangely and inexplicably 
haunted with it through all my life, and especially through 
all my hours of more abstract meditation and soliloquy, 
that I am often tempted to question myself on this point, 
and to say, "Well, what is so mysterious? what is it? 
Something certainly there is that is not mysterious ; much 
there is that is intelligible." And it is pertinent and im- 
portant to the investigation before us that we should draw 
the line of distinction here, though it be a very simple 



OX THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 25 

thing to do so, and should say plainly — the line is clearly 
between what can be known, and what cannot be known. 
There is a veil which we cannot penetrate ; but all things 
do not lie in its shadow. Something we can know ; much, 
I believe. In short, mystery has its place, but manifesta- 
tion also has its place in all things. 

I feel the mystery ; I am overshadowed by it ; but there 
is light upon the edges of the great shadow, and there are 
openings of light into it ; these I may humbly explore. 1 
feel the mystery. Infinitude, eternity, the immeasurable 
plan ; life, being, and the Being of all being — God ; depth 
beyond depth is here, unfathomable, unsearchable. Nay, 
the common scene around us, doubtless, and our own life in 
it, are full of mysteries ; only our familiarity cheats us out 
of the natural wonder. If on some bright summer's day 
you had found yourself standing here in the street or in the 
field, amidst all this moving throng of men and things — if 
you had found yourself standing here, without one prece- 
dent step, with no memory of the past ; your eye, your ear, 
your sense and soul suddenly opened to all the sights and 
sounds of the living universe — sun and sky overhead, and 
waving trees around, and "men as trees walking," you 
would have asked, with uncontrollable astonishment, what 
is all this ? And whence and what am I that behold it ? But 
it is no less a real wonder for being familiar ; and there are 
moments, in dreams of the mind, when we lose our intense 
self-consciousness and almost our personality, in which all 
this appears the wonder and mystery that it is. 

But when we wake from this bemazing wonder into 
knowledge and inquiry, when we begin to understand what 
our life is, and to study the life of the world, then the 
mystery becomes profound difficulty, and seeming contra- 
diction ; our very knowledge confounds us. For we know 
that we suffer ; that the world suffers. That needs not to be 
insisted on ; we know it too well. And we know that God 
is good. Instinctively we say, the Author of this fair uni- 
verse and of this human nature, must be good : to Him the 



26 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

happiness of his creatures must be desirable, nay infinitely 
precious. Why, even our human paternity feels unspeak- 
able longings for the good and happy life of its offspring ; 
this same world is filled with such yearning, ay, and sacri- 
fice, even unto death. And yet — I say it with reverential 
awe, and I say it too with perfect trust — here is Almighty 
power, here is Infinite love ; and the world is its creation 
and care ; and yet, in spite of faith and humility, we cannot 
but exclaim, what a world is it ! 

Very dark it is. But not all dark — let us make up our 
account of it carefully — not all darkness, not all misery, not 
all evil ; not, in the aggregate and mass of its experience, a 
hateful and miserable world; but nevertheless, such an 
amount of evil, both physical and moral, as bewilders all 
calculation ; such an amount of hardship, disaster, sickness, 
sorrow, injustice, bloodshed, brutality and bitter sufferance, 
as must fill every thoughtful beholder with mingled horror 
and indignation. And yet, I repeat, this is a part of the 
domain of Infinite Benevolence. And I humbly venture to 
think that I can understand, in some degree, the problem 
of its sins and sorrows. But it is an awful problem. From 
the beginning, says the great Expositor of Christianity to 
the nations, " this creation groaneth and travaileth in pain 
until now." For sixty centuries, says another, the human 
race has been travelling on in quest of repose, and has not 
found it. And history tells the same sad tale. Whole races of 
men, like the Tartars and Africans, wandering in darkness 
and barbarism ; whole empires torn and rent in pieces, or 
dying out by slow decay ; whole armies mown down on ten 
thousand bloody fields ; cities sacked, towns and towers 
whelmed in ruin ; thousands and tens of thousands of 
human beings sighing away their lives in prisons and dun- 
geons, which no sunlight nor blessed breath of heaven's air 
ever visits ; the foot of man set upon the neck of his brother 
to crush him down to agony and despair — such things, oh ! 
and many such things, of more indescribable horror, have 
had their place in- the history of the world. As it was be- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 27 

fore man dwelt on the earth ; it passed through ages of ma- 
terial convulsions, through the thunder of earthquakes, 
through the smoke and fire of volcanoes ; so, in its moral 
history, there have been volcanoes and earthquakes, thun- 
ders of war, and fires of human wrath, and the smoke and 
smouldering of widespread and mournful desolations. 

And yet, if we would make out a fair statement of the 
case, which we are now attempting, in the first place, we 
must not forget that there is something besides evil in the 
world. We must not pass by the observation, however 
familiar, that history, as it has been usually written, is 
likely very much to mislead us. It deals with what is 
palpable and public, and not with what is private and 
unseen — with the tragedy, and not with the comedy of life 
— with the camp and court, rather than with households 
and homes. Suppose the history of Europe in Napoleon 
Bonaparte's time to be read twenty centuries hence ; and 
that, of all the literature that might illustrate its social char- 
acter, only a few fragments should remain — that almost the 
only record left, were one of murderous wars and of court 
intrigues and vices. Why, the men of that distant clay 
would doubtless look back upon the French Revolution and 
the years succeeding, as a barbarous and bloody time ; and 
they might say of Europe, then, with as much emphasis as 
we do of the world at large — what traces are there upon it 
but of war, and havoc, and misery ? They would see over 
all the horizon but the one black cloud. The millions of 
happy homes beneath it ; the cultivated fields which spread 
far and wide on each side of the track of armies — ay, fields 
which fed those armies, and all Europe beside ; the quiet 
abodes that were scattered over hundreds of valleys and 
mountains, and the virtues and charities that flourished in 
them — these, the observers, looking through the glass of his- 
tory, would not see. 

And it is worthy of special notice that the farther we 
are removed from the field of observation, the more are we 
exposed to mistake the facts. Thus the terms Arab, Egyp- 



28 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

tian, Assyrian, and Hindoo, cany to most minds nothing but 
ideas of barbarism. We think of the multitudes of Asia in 
past times, as but more intelligent hordes of animals. Our 
useful arts and profound sciences not known to them, we 
conclude that they have known nothing. Their customs, 
costumes, ways of life, mode of being, so different from 
ours, we hardly bring them within the range of our com- 
mon humanity. But if there is any clear proof of intellectual 
culture and refinement, it is in the language of a people. 
And by this rule of judging there must have been, and we 
know that there have been, periods of Asiatic culture ex- 
hibiting a very high order of attainments. The Sanscrit, 
the old Hindoo language, with its fifty letters, is, in its 
alphabet, the most perfect language in the world ; and it 
has an extant literature of which only ignorance can 
profess to think lightly.* The old Persian and Arabic 
are not uncultivated tongues ; they have many affinities 
with our English and with German speech ; so much 
so, that Leibnitz said, that a German could understand, 
at sight, whole Persian verses. ISTay, and we know that 
those languages have bodied forth, in philosophy and in 
fiction, some of the finest conceptions of human thought. 
We know that the regal halls of Arabia and Persia have 
not shone with barbaric splendor only, but have listened 
to some of the loftiest and sweetest strains of poetry. I 
can hardly instance anything in our literature more ad- 
mirable than the prayer of the Persian poet, Sadi, " O 
God, have mercy upon the wicked ; for thou hast done 
everything for the good in having made them good ! " And 
I know not that a scene of greater moral beauty can be pro- 
duced from all our works of imagination than that of an 
Arabian romance, in which the monarch calls to his pres- 

* Dr. Draper, in his admirable book on the Intellectual Development of 
Europe, says that the works of Gotama, the great expounder of Buddhism, con- 
sist of 800 large volumes. I cannot help thinking they must be very small in 
the amount of matter contained in each ; but even then, the fact is remarkable 
enough. (See Dr. Draper, p. 53.) 



OX THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 29 

ence the youthful poet, and placing him in the midst of his 
court, points him to all the luxuries and splendors which he 
had brought to decorate his royal halls, and, in the pride of 
his heart, bids him describe the scene ; when the poet, se- 
vere in youthful virtue and full of the inspiration of genius, 
bursts forth into admiration of the surrounding magnificence, 
and at the conclusion says : " Long live the king under the 
shadow of his mighty palaces ! — but let him remember that 
all this lustre shall grow dim and fade away ; and the eyes 
that see it shall grow dim, and darkness shall settle upon 
them ; and these lofty palaces shall sink to the dust, and 
their mighty lord shall sink to the dust also : " then, when 
trembling courtiers interfered, and fawning sycophants 
grew bold in their displeasure, we read that the king bowed 
down, humble and in tears at the rebuke, and loaded the 
noble reprover with his approbation and his gifts. We 
have inherited a good measure of the Jewish contempt for 
heathens ; but it may be doubted whether there are many 
Christian courts that would ever witness such a scene, or 
many Christian monarchs that would have shown such 
nobleness. 

There is one further observation, of an entirely different 
character, to be made in this statement of the problem of 
evil in the world. It is this : that broad and vast and im- 
mense as that problem may appear, it is, after all, in actual 
experience, purely individual. Millions of beings lived in 
India, millions in China. In Assyria, in Egypt, in Greece^ 
in the Roman Empire, in the whole world, millions upon 
millions untold have lived ; but the question really does not 
turn upon some vast calculation of weal and woe, but upon 
the part which each individual man has had in them. We 
generalize this boundless mass of human existence, and are 
apt to regard it as if one being had experienced it all. Eut 
the truth is, nobody has experienced more of it, than you or 
I have, or might have experienced. With regard to all the 
intrinsic difficulties of the case, it is as if but one life had 
been lived in the world ; and since no man has lived an- 



30 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

other's life, or any life but Lis own, there has heen, to ac- 
tual, individual consciousness, hut one life, of thirty, seven- 
ty, or a hundred years, lived on earth. The problem really 
comes within that compass. In the questions which hu- 
manity asks concerning a providence, each one of the un- 
numbered millions of the human race stands apart and 
alone ; as much so, as if they were separated from each 
other by an interval of a million years. It is enough for 
every being, in every world, satisfactorily to settle the ques- 
tions that arise concerning his existence for himself ; he has 
no occasion to go farther ; perhaps he has no business to go 
farther ; but certainly he has no occasion to go farther, 
unless he finds beings, the conditions and allotments of 
whose existence are different from his. If he does not find 
a differing lot, then, I say, settling the question for himself 
does settle it for all. If I can solve the problem of existence 
for myself, I have solved it for everybody ; I have solved it 
for the human race. In other words, if I can see it to be 
right that one being should be created so, I can see it to be 
right that unnumbered millions should be. 

Let us, then, analyze this vast aggregate of human exist- 
ence into its separate and individual consciousness, if we 
would understand it, or the questions that arise from it — 
into that form, in fact, in which only it can be said to exist. 
Humanity, mankind, but as an abstraction, does not exist ; 
man only lives. From the vast mass of what we call mis- 
ery, mischance, and failure, let us single out this man. Did 
the man who lived in India, in Tartary, ages ago — did the 
man who walked in the train of an Assyrian court, or was 
marshalled in the hosts of Eome, or travelled down through 
the Middle Ages — did he enjoy and value his life ? Were 
there pleasures and satisfactions amidst his stragglings and 
sorrows ? And amidst his stragglings and sorrows, was any 
valuable experience developed ? Did he learn anything 
worth learning ? And does the man who stands in this 
modern world — do you and I, find anything in our life, that 
makes us prize it ; anything that makes us feel that we 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 31 

had infinitely rather have it, than have it not ? Doubtless 
we do, and other men do ; all men do. I am satisfied that 
there is an almost universal overrating of the miseries of life 
as compared with its blessings ; and that not one in a mil- 
lion of those whom we lament over as if their life was a 
misfortune, wonld thank us for our sympathy, or accept the 
conclusion that they had better not have existed at all. 

II. And now, such being the case of the world's life, we 
come to inquire, in the next place, upon what theory this 
state of things is to be accounted for. In this system of the 
world, there is suffering and sin ; there is suffering and sin 
in the individual heart. How, under the sway of a good 
and wise providence, are these things to be understood? 
How could these things be ? In other words, we meet here 
with the long-vexed problem of " the origin of evil." Let 
me say here, that I do not like the phrase " origin of evil." 
Not whence is evil, nor how it came into the world, is my 
question ; but the fact that evil exists ; and what view is to 
be taken of it. 

With regard to this problem, I know it is often said, 
that no theory ever offered, and none that ever can be 
offered, does, or will, throw any satisfactory light upon it ; 
and that those only who do not understand the problem, 
will imagine that it can be relieved, in any degree, from 
its insurmountable difficulties. It may be that this is my 
own case ; at any rate, I must risk the imputation, for I 
conceive that this problem does not defy all human efforts 
for relief or explanation. I do not believe that a point so 
essential to any reasonable comprehension of the lot of our 
life, is left to be a dark and terrible enigma. It would be 
strange, indeed, if the one thing that crushes me to the 
earth — evil, should be as unintelligible as if it were the blind- 
est mischance ; if the only word I can utter, when writhing 
with pain, or weighed down by affliction, is mystery ; if the 
one great question which my nature asks, — " why is evil, 
erring, grief, sin, permitted in the world ? "• — is to strike me 
dumb, as an idiot. It is vain to think of keeping the human 



32 ON THE PEOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

mind away from it. It will ask the question. It lias been 
asking from the beginning. 

I do not submit, then, to this lofty caveat against in- 
quiry. I am satisfied that to this ever- pressing question 
about the reason why evil exists, there is an answer as to 
the principle ; and that all the difficulty lies in details — 
i. e., in the application of the principle. And this is the 
distinction which I should take in regard to an observa- 
tion of Bayle, quoted with approbation by Leibnitz.* 
" Those who pretend," says Bayle, " that the conduct of 
God in regard to sin, and the consequences of sin, has 
nothing in it for which they cannot render a reason, 
deliver themselves up to the mercy of their adversary." 
I grant that this is true, or may be true, with regard to 
details, but not with regard to the principle. I do not pre- 
tend that there is nothing in the events of human life and 
history, for which I cannot render a reason. In the applica- 
tion of the principle there may be difficulty, though not a 
difficulty that has any pendency to disturb it. Leibnitz 
himself says the same thing in reference to his own theory. 
His theory — if that can be called a theory, which is nothing 
but an assertion — is this : that in the best possible system 
of things evil was an inevitable part ; and when explana- 
tion is demanded by his antagonist, he says, " Mr. Bayle 
demands a little too much ; he would have us show how evil 
is bound up with the best possible plan of the creation — 
which would be a perfect explanation of the phenomenon ; 
but we do not undertake to give it, nor are we obliged to 
do so ; it would be impossible in the present state ; it is 
enough that it may be true, it may be inevitable " — 
(though, strangely to me, while hovering about this point 
throughout almost the entire Theodicee, he never once says 
wherein this inevitableness consists — ) " it may be," he says, 
" that certain particular evils are bound up with what is 
best in general. This," he says, " is sufficient for an answer 
to objections ; but not for a comprehension of the thing." f 

* Theodicee, p. 55, edition of M. A. Jacques. f lb., p. 158. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 33 

But such difficulty, I repeat, about the application of 
principles, is common to all subjects ; it attaches no peculiar 
mystery to the problem of evil. I may also say, that to go 
into this application — to go into details, is the very business 
of these lectures : we shall have perpetually to answer ques- 
tions ; our present concern is with the theory — with the 
principle upon which those questions are to be answered. 

While I am upon this point — the difference, that is to 
say, between the principle and the details — let me make an- 
other distinction. It is often said that nothing but a future 
life can clear up the mysteries of the present. That is true, 
with regard to details. Why some particular series of ca- 
lamities is permitted ; why a paralyzing disease presses 
upon the whole of this life, perhaps nothing but a future 
life can tell. But the principle lying at the basis of the 
problem, I think we shall see, stands clear and manifest, 
here and now. 

Or, to state the same thing in a more general way : — 
here is a world and a world system ; here is man placed in 
it, with a particular constitution, mental and bodily ; here 
is a story of human fortunes, running back into darkness 
and obscurity ; a story full, doubtless, of strange things, to 
our human view — full, certainly, of complications hard to 
unravel — full of stragglings and sorrows. Now, why this 
particular hind of world and system and race, should have 
been chosen to occupy this particular space and time in the 
boundless domain of being ; why our nature should be so 
weak, or why so strong, why so high or so low ; or why 
such and so great evils should attend our human develop- 
ment, rather than others — manifestly it is altogether beyond 
us to say. I must pray you to attend to the distinction I 
am making, for I would not be thought guilty of the pre- 
sumption and folly of saying that I can answer such ques- 
tions. If this is what is meant by mystery in the creation, 
I admit it all, and a great deal more. And if any one 
should say, on some hearsay report of the lecturer's design 
this evening, " Oh ! he proposed to solve the mystery of the 



34 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

world, and the mystery of all the evil in the world ! " I an- 
swer that I propose no such thing ! To Pope's line, 

" All partial evil, universal good," 

Yoltaire mockingly and bitterly says, " A singular notion 
of universal good — composed of the stone, of the gout, of 
all crimes, of all sufferings, of death, and damnation."* 
To any such one-sided or passionate reasonings about evil, 
I am not concerned at present to reply. Be it a mystery — 
something beyond our reach to comprehend — why this par- 
ticular form of the creation is chosen, and therefore, why 
these special " ills that flesh is heir to," are put into the 
system ; still, there is a principle lying at the bottom of all, 
and accounting for much, which is not mysterious, and 
which I may, without presumption, I think, offer for your 
consideration. Let us, then, proceed to state those inevi- 
table laws of all being — of all being but God himself — which 
lead us irresistibly to that principle. 

First, the system in which evil exists is a creation. It 
is not something self-existent, but something made, ar- 
ranged, set in order by a Power above. 

Secondly, to a created system limitation necessarily at- 
taches. It could not be infinite, in magnitude nor in any 
other attribute. Created power cannot be omnipotent ; 
created intelligence cannot be omniscient. Every created 
intelligence, every created moral nature, must have a be- 
ginning ; and the law of its action is, and for aught that we 
can see must be, development, growth, progress. At any 
rate, limitation belongs of necessity to the whole system ; 
to men and things alike. 

Thirdly, limitation implies imperfection. Human knowl- 
edge is of necessity imperfect ; the human will and con- 
science are of necessity imperfect ; the material elements, 
too, air, earth, water, are necessarily imperfect. That is to 
say, they can have no absolute and infinite perfection, like 
the being of God. In other words, their perfection, such as 

* La Raison par Alphabet ; article Tout est Men, 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 35 

it is, must be relative ; i. e., they answer the best purpose 
that they can, with reference to some end. Thus the air is 
the best element for the lungs to breathe ; the lungs the best 
organ for imparting purity and vitality to the blood ; the 
system of circulations the best for the growth of the body ; 
the body the best organization for the soul ; the powers of 
the soul the best for high culture and happiness : but there 
is no absolute best in them, no absolute perfection ; there 
cannot be. Throughout and at every step, there is imper- 
fection, liability to hurts, liability to go wrong. Thus 
again, every organ, every element is best for its specific pur- 
pose, but not for every other purpose. Nay more ; that 
which Jits it for one thing, imfits it for another. The whole 
human frame is good, is perfect for its purpose. For its 
purpose, it is required to be composed of delicate organs, 
and to be covered with a sensitive envelopment. It is per- 
fect for its purpose ; but it is not so good for fight ; it is not 
clad in mail ; it is not bullet-proof. 

The question is, how comes evil to be in the world ? 
Or, in other words, why was it not excluded from the system ? 
Certainly it is not desirable for its own sake ; infinitely 
otherwise ; we feel it to be infinitely otherwise. How often 
does the vision rise before our minds, of a world without 
pain and without sin without one sorrow or wrong in all 
its blessed dwellings ; and we say, with a tone perhaps, of 
something like complaint as well as heavy sighing, why 
could not this world have been such ? Why, then, was it 
not such a world ? And the answer that I give is, that it 
was in the nature of things impossible. This is my prin- 
ciple — that it was, in the nature of things, and by the in- 
evitable conditions of the problem, impossible to exclude evil. 

Before I attempt to show how and why it was impos- 
sible, let me provide, by a remark or two, against any pre- 
conceptions that may arise in your minds with regard to 
my design. I do not intend then, in the first place, to take 
up any questions in theology. According to the statutes of 
the Lowell Institute, and equally in accordance with my 



36 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

own views of propriety in such a course of lectures, I am 
required to avoid all polemic discussion. And indeed I do 
not see, but the question which I raise in this lecture, 
presses equally upon every theology. For if any one traces 
all the evil in the world to the sin of Adam, then the 
question would be, why was not Adam prevented from 
sinning ? And my answer is, that he could not — being a free 
moral and imperfect creature — that he could not be pre- 
vented. If this is true, it must be a great relief to see it ; 
for it must seem strange that he was not kept pure, if that 
was possible. It appears to me that we are bound to think 
that he and his posterity would have been kept in perfect 
innocence and bliss, if, in the nature of things, it had been 
possible. 

Let me further say that the position which I take — viz., 
that evil could not be prevented — implies no limitation of 
the Divine power or goodness. This idea of power, I con- 
ceive, is to be put out of the case altogether. Yet it has 
very closely adhered both to ancient and modern reasonings 
upon evil. Lactantius, in his treatise on " The Wrath of 
God " (sec. 13), introduces the Epicureans as reasoning 
thus : " Either God wills to remove evil, and cannot ; or he 
can, and will not ; or he cannot, and will not ; or he can, 
and will. If he wills, and cannot, that is weakness. If he 
can, and will not, that is malignity. If he will not, and 
cannot, that is a defect both of power and goodness. But 
if he can and will ; then why is evil ? " Or, to take a mod- 
ern instance of the same kind of reasoning — in Samuel 
Eogers's " Table Talk," Mr. Eogers is quoted as saying, " The 
three acutest men with whom I was ever acquainted, James 
Mackintosh, Malthus, and Bobus Smith, were all agreed 
that the attributes of the Deity must be in some way 
limited, else there would be no sin and misery." And 
Leibnitz quotes Bayle to the same effect in his preface to 
the " Theodicee." Mr. Bogers and his friends thought, as 
I know from more private sources, that, as the limitation 
could not be of wisdom or goodness, it must be of power, 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 37 

i.'e., of power to make the world otherwise. Now I must 
venture to say, that all this language, whether of Lactan- 
tius, or of Mr. Bayle, or of Mr. Eogers and his friends, very 
much surprises me. For the truth is, that power has nothing 
to do with the case. There are such things as inherent, in- 
trinsic natural impossibilities. It is impossible, for instance, 
that matter should exist without occupying space ; and it is 
not so proper to say that God cannot make it so, as that the 
thing cannot be. It is said, I know, that God cannot make 
two mountains without a valley, i. e., & depression of land 
between them ; but that I take to be only the strongest, 
popular expression of the utter impossibility of the thing. 
The idea of power, strictly speaking, or of more power 
or less, has no relevancy to the case. If I take two balls 
and lay them before me, and then add two more, the sum 
cannot be five balls ; and as to power more or less to do 
that, why infinite power can no more make them five, than 
an infant's power. Again, the sura of the angles of every 
triangle is equal to two right angles — no more and no less — 
and it canuot be otherwise. And you might as well ask me 
why God could not make a triangle to include four or six 
right angles, as ask why He could not make an imperfect, 
moral and free nature without any liability to error or 
mistake. 

If this were what the ancients meant by fate, they had 
meant rightly. But it is not to be represented as a power 
above God. For it is only saying that irreconcilable contra- 
dictions cannot meet in the same nature. It is only saying 
that a thing cannot be one thing, and a totally different 
thing from what it is, at the same time. 

If now I have sufficiently guarded my proposition from 
mistake, let us proceed to examine it. The problem of evil, 
the question why is it ? — this is the subject before us. 

Evil is of two kinds, natural and moral. With regard 
to the latter, I think the case is very clear. But let us in- 
quire for a moment concerning the former — i. e., natural or 
physical evil. 



38 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

The great and comprehensive form of natural evil is 
pain. And by pain I mean now, of course, physical suffer- 
ing ; or, the suffering that springs from a bodily organization. 
The question is, could such an organization be made, and 
made to answer its purposes to voluntary agents, without 
that liability ? Or rather, here are two questions. Could 
it be made at all ? That is one question. Was it possible 
to make an organ capable' of pleasure, without its being 
liable, to pain when hurt, broken, or torn in pieces ? Look, 
for instance, at that sensitive vesture with which the 
human body is clothed, the skin ; or at the corresponding 
membrane that lines the interior cavities of the structure, 
the mucous membrane. With soft and gentle touches 
applied to the body, with warm and balmy airs breathing 
upon it, or sweet odors inhaled, or healthful food received, 
this sensitive vesture, within and without, thrills with 
pleasure. Could it be — was it in the nature of things pos- 
sible, that cold could freeze it, or the knife cut it, or baleful 
poison could enter in, or starving and death, without giving 
pain ? Could the sense of touch, alive to all impressions, 
find every impression equally agreeable ? In fact, would not 
such a perpetual monotony of impression, have been itself 
disagreeable ? But could any sensitive integument be made 
to which it should be indifferent whether water bathed or 
fire burned it ? Pleasure and pain seem to us necessarily 
correlative, necessarily bound together, in any organ that is 
capable of either. 

I may doubt then, whether it was possible, in the nature 
of things, to exclude pain from the human or from any sen- 
sitive organization. But it is yet clearer, in the next place, 
that pain is necessary to the purposes which this organiza- 
tion was designed to answer. I suppose that it is univer- 
sally conceded that there are such purposes ; that the body 
was made for the mind, made to train, to educate the mind. 
But suppose it were made only for itself. Even then — even 
for the body's preservation, pain is as necessary as pleasure. 
The mind's prudence needs the salutary admonition of pain. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 39 

" The burnt child dreads the fire." But not the fire alone, 
every element around us, would prove fatal to the igno- 
rance, inexperience, and impetuosity of childhood, if pain 
did not teach it prudence. The body itself would perish in 
a thousand ways, if caution and wisdom were not learnt 
from suffering. Then again — looking to higher purposes — 
what is it, as the primary impulse, that stirs the world 
to activity, to industry? What is it that prevents it 
from sinking into perpetual languor and sleep? It is 
the pain of hunger. Or why does man build his rude 
hut, or fashion his clothing of skins, but to protect him- 
self against the pain which the elements would inflict? 
Or if we say, that sloth itself is irksome and painful, 
still it comes to the same thing. " Uneasiness," of some 
kind, as Mr. Locke teaches, " is the universal motive to 
action." But suppose, on the other hand, that there was no 
pain. Suppose that all sensation were pleasurable. How 
certainly would the human race sink into the fathomless 
gulf of sensualism ? If excess never brought satiety nor 
suffering with it, how certain must it be, that it would never 
stop ; and that the whole man, the whole nature, the whole 
world, would sink into utter moral perdition ! Man, we say, 
is to be trained ; his higher nature is to be developed and culti- 
vated. To this end, the senses minister. To effect it, they have 
pleasures to offer. But they must have other means than pleas- 
ure at their disposal, or they could never fulfil their office. 

Either in the nature of things, then, or in the purposes 
of things, or in both, we say, that physical evil, as far as we 
can see, was inevitable. 

But let us now look at what is more material to the prob- 
lem we are considering — at moral evil. 

"Was it possible to frame a nature, moral, finite and free, 
and to exclude from it all liability to error, to sin ? I an- 
swer that by the very terms of the statement, it was just as im- 
possible, as to make two mountains without a valley ; or, to 
make the angles of a triangle to be equal to three or four right 
angles. The very statement of the case excludes the possibility. 



40 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

Let us look at the case. Here is a being created with 
certain moral faculties. He is capable of loving the right. 
He is capable of loving the wrong. He is also perfectly 
free to do the one or the other, at his pleasure. If he 
pleases to do wrong, nothing, can prevent him, that leaves 
him free. He is imperfect moreover, and is liable, from 
defect of knowledge, to go astray. He is endowed, too, 
with the love of happiness; he must be so — the very 
capability of happiness implies the love of it ; and in his 
ignorance, he is liable to suppose that the evil way will 
make him happiest ; that the indulgence of his appetites 
and passions, for instance, will yield him a fuller satisfaction 
than the culture of his higher nature. Aberration and fail- 
ure, alas ! are, more or less, the story of every human life. 
Aberration and failure, too, are grievous sins : for this being 
had power — had freedom, that is to say, to choose the better 
part. The fact is so ; but the question is— was it possible 
to place him beyond the reach of this peril ? If it were, 
then we are to find the origin of evil in the arbitrary and 
mysterious will of Heaven. But was it possible ? Was it 
possible to make this being impeccable, incapable of evil, 
independent of temptation ? 

What is the only conceivable condition on which such a 
result can be secured? That man's will be bound, con- 
strained, compelled to the right course. But then he is not 
free. Take away that perilous element, freedom, and then 
he may be safe ; but then he is no longer a moral being. 
So long as he is imperfect and free, he must be liable to 
choose wrong. He need not, indeed, in a palpable case, 
choose wrong. He need not be guilty of positive malignity, 
of intentional sin — and the distinction is important — but he 
must be exposed to sins of inadvertence, exposed to slide 
into evil unawares. Nay, and in & palpable case, he must be 
free to go wrong, if he pleases ; else he is not a moral being. 

But what then is evil, in man, under this theory ? — it may 
be asked ; and I ought to pause here a moment to answer. 
Is evil a mere mistake, a mere confusion as to what is right, 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 41 

of a mind dazzled by worldly fascinations or clouded by 
sense and appetite? Far from it. There is indeed mistake 
about it, confusion of mind, blinding temptation. Still, 
when a man is drawn to evil, he commonly knows it to be 
evil. Why, but for this, is there any struggle in his mind 
about it ? How is it, but for this knowing better, that the 
descent to gross vice, to falsehood, to dishonesty, is often 
achieved through strife, misgiving, and agony at every step ? 
Nay, and it must not only be that he knows better, but that 
he can do better ; else he could not blame himself. "What, 
in fact, is the case presented to the tempted and falling ? 
There, on the one hand, is some advantage — pleasure, lucre, 
distinction — happiness, the mind calls it. Here on the other 
hand, is purity, rectitude, virtue. Between these lies the 
question. Here is the crisis — the most tremendous that can 
be, in the nature of things. "What does the man do ? "What 
does he choose ? There is no compulsion. There is no com- 
pulsion to evil; and there is no compulsion to good. Power 
Almighty, that reaches to the infinite height above, and to 
the infinite deep below, and sways the boundless spheres 
around, touches not that solemn prerogative of choice. 
"What does the man do ? He chooses the wrong ! "What is 
the definition of that act % A violated conscience ! It is 
the most awful fact in the history of humanity : a violated 
conscience ! It is the breaking of the highest law in the 
universe, and of that which the offender feels and knows to 
be the highest — the manifested law of the infinite Eecti- 
tude. The consequences, indeed, are fearful; the most 
dreadful miseries in the world are the results of wrong- 
doing ; but they stand in just and lawful accordance with 
the deed — not in any disproportion. 

But suppose the man to choose right : let us consider 
that, a moment ; for it will confirm our view, I think, of the 
essential attributes of a free nature. "What is virtue, good- 
ness, holiness ? It is often spoken of, as if it could be cre- 
ated in the heart, or could be put into it, by an independent 
power. But can it be so ? Virtue, love is the voluntary 



42 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

act of the soul. It is by definition, incapable of creation. 
It cannot be put into the heart. It is the heart's own vol- 
untary putting forth. All that we can conceive of, as pos- 
sible to be created, is the capacity to love. The act of loving 
is the sole act of the being created. It is as much so, as 
hatred is his own act. Both are alike free, voluntary, un- 
forced ; or they are not moral. 

Whether we consider, therefore, the essential nature of 
good or of evil in the mind, we are brought to the conclu- 
sion, that the exposure to evil is one of the inevitable con- 
ditions of the problem involved in a moral, finite, and free 
nature. I have before expressed my surprise that Leibnitz, 
in his great work on theology, the Theodicee, which is 
chiefly occupied with this very subject, nowhere distinctly 
points to the nature and ground of this inevitableness of 
evil. He does however once quote with qualified approba- 
tion the following sentence from Mr. Jacquelot : " Suppose," 
says Jacquelot, " that God could not prevent the bad use of 
free will, without annihilating it : it will be agreed that His 
wisdom and His glory having determined Him to make crea- 
tures free, the same powerful reason must preponderate over 
the unhappy consequences that would spring from this lib- 
erty."* This I regard as pointing to the true theory of the 
origin of evil. Only by being annihilated, could free will 
be secured from this liability to aberration and evil. 

But I must now, to bring this theory fully before you ? 
carry it a step farther ; and I mean, farther back, to the 
origin of the human experiment. Every man begins his 
experiment in infancy. The race began in infancy. Every 
generation must begin so. Could it begin anywhere else ? 
The point is material : for it is easy to see that if it were 
otherwise, if the man or the race could begin where their 
predecessor leaves off; if each generation had taken up all 
the wisdom of the past generation, and borne it onward ; if 
the child had assumed all the virtues of his parent, and had 
proceeded on that vantage ground, then the burden of 

* Theodicee, p. 166. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 4.3 

human sin and misery would have been relieved to an in- 
calculable extent. Again I ask, was that, in the nature of 
things, possible? "Was it possible to put those results of 
past experience into any newly created heart ? Was it not 
inevitable that every newly created race, every newly cre- 
ated soul should begin in infancy, and work its own way 
up to virtue and happiness ? Such, we see, is the fact ; 
but was any other thing possible ? For myself, I do not 
see that any other thing was possible. 

For experience, like virtue, by definition, cannot he 
created. Wisdom, by definition, cannot he created. It is 
what the moral being works out for himself. It is not 
God's act, but man's act. It implies choice, effort, resist- 
ance ; and these are the works and acts of the human being. 
This being is created, not with certain virtues, but with 
certain faculties. Even if the body were brought into ex- 
istence full-formed and in its adult state, as we may suppose 
the body of the first human being was, still there must be 
a time when this being puts forth his first act, and there 
must be an after time, when he puts forth the second and 
the third act. Can the first act have all the precision, cer- 
tainty and strength of the second, the third, the hundreth? 
If not, then here is learning, here is progress. But present 
learning implies past ignorance ; progress to-day, defect 
yesterday. In ignorance then, in weakness, by experiment- 
ing, the human being, the human race, must advance and 
grow and gain strength. In the nature of things, it cannot 
be otherwise. 

Still and after all, I do not doubt the question will be 
asked — was there no alternative? Pressed by the hard 
strife of the problem, one may strangely say : " Well, but 
was freedom itself any necessary part of a moral and good 
nature ? Could not God have made a being pure and good 
without freedom ? Or, having given him freedom, could he 
not have held it back from all aberration ? But do you not 
see that these suppositions violate the very conditions of the 
problem of moral agency ? — that they are neither tenable, 



44: ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

nor indeed conceivable ? Nay, if the highest and noblest 
kind of existence, *. e., a moral existence, could have been 
made and kept pure and happy, it is inconceivable that it 
should not have been. 

The truth is, as I conceive, that the failure of this entire 
argument, if it fails with you, arises from my fault in stating 
it, or from yours, in not adhering to the premises. Let us 
change the terms of the question — let us put this, which is 
regarded as such a confounding and insoluble problem, into 
another shape — and ask, why ignorance is permitted in the 
creation. You find the most terrible and overwhelming 
calamities and miseries, springing from ignorance; from 
ignorance of the laws of health — of ventilation, food, drink, 
medicine ; from ignorance of the laws of material nature, 
and of human nature. Indeed, almost all the evils in the 
world may be referred to this one source. And now you 
ask — quite confident that nobody can answer — disdainfully 
and solemnly shaking the head at any attempt to answer — 
struck blind by a perspicacity which sees that there is noth- 
ing to be seen — you ask, " What is the origin of ignorance ? " 
What is the origin of ignorance % Why, it could not be helped. 
That is the origin of ignorance. It could not be helped. Do 
you wonder that man is not omniscient ? Is that a confound- 
ing and insoluble problem to you ? Why not go on, and won- 
der that man is not almighty, all-wise, and infinitely happy % 

But now, I repeat, if any one goes into detail, and says — 
" Why this ? Why that % Why such a race as the human ? 
Why the Chinese or Africans ? Why such degraded forms 
of being ? Why creatures maimed and crippled by hered- 
itary taint ? " — I may well answer, that we do not know ; 
that it is quite beyond us to know, in particular, why these 
special forms and conditions of being exist. Of the degree 
of imperfection, best for this world or for that world, it is, 
of course, quite beyond us to form any judgment. But 
surely it is something for us to consider, and something pro- 
foundly entering into the problem of our existence, that it 
was in the very nature of things impossible to remove from 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 45 

the system of a moral creation, all evil, all ignorance, all 
error, all suffering.* 

Let me now detain you a few moments longer, while I 
attempt to carry this argument, necessarily abstract thus far, 
into some of its practical bearings upon life, and upon the 
state of mind, in our reasonings, which, as a matter of in- 
ference, it requires of us. 

I say, then in the first place — let it be fixed in our 
minds, that the system of the moral world is a system of 
spontaneous development. It could not be other than 
spontaneous in consistency with its own nature. The agent 
is free. He must do, within the range of his permitted ac- 
tivity, what he will. You ask why things could not have 
been ordered or controlled so as to bring out a happier result ; 
why such monsters in human shape as Tiberius, and Caesar 
Borgia, or the petty tyrant in his own family or village, 
should not have been hindered from their excesses or their 
cruelties ? The answer is, they could not, unless by being 
deprived of their natural freedom. If they had been an- 
imals they might have been guarded and governed by in- 
stinct. But they were allowed to be worse, by as much as 
their range was larger ; and that range could not be con- 
tracted without giving up the essential, the moral character 
of the system. To all such hypothetical questions, the an- 

* As I am anxious to relieve this conclusion from all unnecessary objection, I 
will add, that it is not altogether heterodox. Since I first delivered this course 
of lectures, I have read Archbishop King's work " On the Origin of Evil," trans- 
lated and commented upon by Edmund Law, Bishop of Carlisle — some weight of 
testimony, certainly, from the Church of England — in which substantially the 
same view is taken. Substantially, but I may say, not precisely. The course of 
the archbishop's argument is mainly this : Take away anything that you call 
an evil, and I will show you that a greater evil would come in its place. But 
the ground taken in this lecture, is that it was in the nature of things impos- 
sible to exclude it ; that it is an essential contradiction in ideas to put imperfec- 
tion, choice, virtue on one side, and immunity from all evil, error, suffering on 
the other. There was a book published in Hartford, Conn., some years since, 
espousing, I think, mainly the same solution of our problem, and I was pleased to 
see a notice of it in the New Englander, in which this solution was commended 
as worthy at least of serious consideration. 



46 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

swer is — given a nature moral and free : given a world for 
its sphere ; and the consequences must follow. Let the en- 
quirer seize this idea of spontaneous development and hold 
it fast. Interpositions, in certain circumstances and for cer- 
tain purposes, we may and do believe in; "but they are ex- 
ceptions from the system, not the rule. As if, when the 
Creator had made the world and placed man upon it, He 
had then left, and, if I may say so, neglected it and cast it 
off, to run to its own free course — such is the general aspect 
and light in which we are to study its history. If in this 
study we meet, as we shall meet, with abundant evidence 
that this world is not cast off, that it is controlled and guided 
while it is left free, it will be our own wisdom and great 
happiness to see that. If we meet with the fact of Divine 
interposition, as we believe that we do, we shall receive it 
with most reverent joy and thanksgiving. But still we must 
clearly distinguish this from the general course of events. 
"We must distinctly see that we are mainly to study, not a 
supernatural, but a natural development; and moreover, 
not an animal nor angelic, but a human development. We 
must firmly say — what man pleases to be, that he must 
be ; what human reason, conscience, affection will, that 
they must do ; and what human ignorance, barbarism, pas- 
sion will, that they must do. It could not be helped, unless 
by unmaking this nature, deranging this plan, destroying 
this system of the world. 

In the next place, that man's growth and action be free 
and rational, the system of treatment under which he lives 
must be one of general laws, and not of sudden and violent 
expedients ; a system of gentleness and patience, of moral 
influence, and much of it, indirect influence. Our human 
shortsightedness and passion are ready often, to call down 
sudden and signal vengeance upon the evil-doer. " Is there 
not some chosen curse," we say, " some hidden thunder to 
blast the wretch who violates all laws, human and divine ? " 
But suppose it were so. Suppose that the eternal retribu- 
tion that dwells embosomed in the air around us, were to 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 47 

'burst forth in thunder upon every atrocious crime. Sup- 
pose that the Infinite Intelligence were ever devising new 
penalties for guilty deeds. Or suppose that, by a general 
law, the lying lips were always smitten with an instant 
blow, or that there were a whip wielded by an invisible 
hand, for every villain in the world. It might be no more 
than justice ; and you might say that the world would then 
be strictly governed. Yes, but the government would then 
be a police, and not a providence. Human nature would 
break down under such a system of treatment. Men would 
be like slaves under the lash ; and their virtue, mere terror 
and cowardice. Therefore men are left slowly to learn the 
evil of their ways, and human wickedness is suffered to run 
far, that the experience of evil may be corrective, and con- 
trition for it generous and sincere, and repentance deep and 
thorough. 

Yet it is not to be overlooked, in the third place, that the 
system of this moral creation is one of restraint and correc- 
tion. There is restraint here. There are limits to man's 
power and will and wickedness. He cannot overleap the 
barriers of the world ; he cannot jump off from the globe 
which he inhabits. It rolls through the infinite void, a 
separate sphere and school ; and the pupil cannot escape 
from it, — but by an act, rarely committed, and almost al- 
ways to be referred to insanity. Material nature around us 
too, and so far as it enters into and forms a part of our own 
compound being, is full of restraint and retribution. Heat 
and cold and storm and night, and sleep and hunger and 
disease and pain, hold their place amidst all the stragglings 
of our will ; and no man may deny or disregard their power. 

There is a solemn control within us, also. I feel that 
there is an awful Providence over my mind. Amidst the 
thousand questionings of my spirit and the ten thousand 
moral emergencies of my experience, conscience rises up 
before me, ay, and against me if I do wrong, like a lifted 
finger. There is something within me, which is above my 
will, and despite my will, it proclaims a law. He who 



48 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY, 

made onr nature free, made it not free from that glorious, 
that tremendous bond. All written law, every covenant, 
promise, and oath in the world — all rest upon that inner 
bond. To obey that law within, is honor, peace, and fulness 
of joy. To disobey, is misery and ruin. Amidst all that is 
called ruin in the world, there is nothing like the ruin of 
guilt ; and of all the miseries in the world, there is nothing 
like the agony of remorse. And though the sharpness of 
that agony be escaped through the dulness of conscience, 
though the solemn reality be veiled over by the haze of 
prosperity, yet I do not believe that any human being ever 
solved the problem of evil in himself, the problem of sen- 
suality or avarice or malignant passion, without finding and 
feeling, ay, settling it in his deepest heart, that it was an un- 
happy course. Here, then, are restraint and retribution. 

Such, in fine, and as a matter of incontrovertible fact, is 
the system of the world ; material, and as such, a sphere of 
education ; moral, and therefore free — and therefore liable 
in its very nature to aberration and evil, to sin and suffer- 
ing ; a system by its very nature, and inevitably, one of 
spontaneous development, a system necessarily, for its pur- 
poses, one of general laws ; and clearly, by the intervention 
of a Power above humanity, a system of stupendous moral 
restraints. 

Such, as I read it, is the problem of human life and his- 
tory ; and such, in the most general form, is its solution. 
"We utter that phrase — human life and history — in a breath : 
but what infinitude of meaning is in it ! "What ages of tre- 
mendous experience does it describe ! It is not a mere cold 
theme for philosophic disquisition ; it is life, yours and mine, 
the world's life — intense, unutterable, steeped in joys and 
sorrows unutterable — wide as the spread of nations, com- 
prehending the experience of unnumbered millions of crea- 
tures, swelling with the burden of long ages of existence. 
A solemn story, of things not one of which can be indiffer- 
ent to him who is a man ! History and biography have 
written it, and yet, they have not written a millionth part 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 49 

of it; fiction has illustrated it, and yet it is stranger than 
fiction; poetry has embalmed it in holy inspiration and 
sympathy, and yet the unwritten poetry is a thousandfold 
more than the written. Ay, everywhere has life — the now 
dead and vanished life of ages — been such. In crowded em- 
pires and among the scattered isles ; in gay and gorgeous 
cities, and in solitary and lowly huts ; in the fisherman's 
bark upon the Northern seas, and the shepherd's Arabian 
tent, and the hunter's Alpine path ; by the hearth and the 
fireside, or in wandering and weariness ; in the dark and 
dreary castles of the old Northmen, or upon the sunny slopes 
of Italy, of Persia, and of India, everywhere life, this same 
life, has had its lot — amidst wailings of grief and melodies 
of joyous hearts, amidst the desolations of war and famine 
aiid pestilence, and the green abodes of peace and plenty : 
age with its heavy sigh and infancy with its prattlings, have 
had part in this human lot ; the joys and sorrows of parents 
and children, the secret, never-uttered ruminating, upon the 
mortal lot and immortal hereafter, of the private heart ; 
passion and strife, and glory and shame ; courage and aspi- 
ration, and defeat and despair — all that is life, and all that 
death is — all bound up in this tremendous bond of human 
existence ! 

Comparatively, nothing in the world is worth studying 
but that. God's wisdom in the stupendous problem of hu- 
man existence, let me understand that; or let me under- 
stand what I can of it. All other sciences do in fact con- 
verge to that — the illustration of God's wisdom in the world. 
All arts — sculpture, painting, poetry, music, history, and 
every form of literature — are studies and illustrations of the 
great humanity. Bat the philosophy of it all — that do I 
seek above all things. 

I believe that all is well. I believe that all is the best 
possible. Understand me, however. I hold to optimism in 
this sense; not that man's work is the best possible, but that 
God's work is the best possible — is the utmost that it was 
possible for Divine power and wisdom to do for man. 
4 



50 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

" What could I have done for my vineyard, that I have not 
done for it," saith the Lord. It is an essential part of the 
theory which I adopt, and one which I especially desire to 
illustrate, that the free will of man, while perfectly free, is 
yet surrounded by wise instructions and powerful restraints ; 
that the world of nature and of humanity are full of them. 
I do not believe that the good Being would have created a 
moral system which in its freedom was certain to run down 
to utter destruction and misery. I believe he saw that it 
could, with his. care and aid, travel upward, higher and 
higher through ages. But I do not believe that it was pos- 
sible in the nature of things, to exclude pain and weariness, 
or stumbling and wandering from the path that shall con- 
duct it to the heights, to the ever-rising heights of virtue and 
happiness. 

But in this theory — to say one word more — there is no 
place for moral apathy. ]STo man may fold his arms, and 
say, " Things must be so ; and in erring, I yield but to na- 
ture." There is no fate in this world, like the fate that a 
man makes for himself. That is fate indeed — the inevitable 
necessity, that every man must freely work out his own weal 
or woe. If there be any practical value in this discussion, 
it is in having drawn your attention distinctly to this inev- 
itable necessity — as the fact on which hinges the whole 
moral philosophy of human life and history. It is a fact, 
unalterable, fixed as adamant. "Whether we build upon 
that rock, or break upon that rock — one thing is certain — 
it cannot be removed. But we may build upon it: and 
therefore to point it out, and, amidst the waves, the strifes 
and perils of human existence, to lift it up clearly to view, 
is to send out a challenge to all the spiritual heroism in the 
world, ay, and an alarm-call to all the sluggard indolence in 
the world ; and to summon every man that lives, to do all 
that he can for himself, and to do all that he can for others. 
To arm the soul to look that dread fact of inalienable moral 
responsibility fairly in the face, and to arouse the soul to 
discharge itself of that stupendous trust with humility and 



ON THE PKOBLEH OF HUMAN DESTINY. 51 

resolution — these are the highest ends of all right study and 
of all true wisdom. 

I say in fine, and I say plainly, that for sickly com- 
plainers, for poor voluptuaries, for weak worldlings — for 
ignoble creatures that had rather be innocent sheep and 
be happy, than wrestling angel-natures, taking blows and 
wounds in the lists of virtue — I have no doctrine to deliver. 
I say deliberately and firmly, that I had rather have com- 
menced my existence as I have, than in some imaginary 
elysium of negative, stationary, choiceless, unprogressive in- 
nocence and enjoyment. 

Give me freedom, give me knowledge, give me breadth 
of experience ; I would have it all. No memory is so hal- 
lowed, no memory is so dear, as that of temptation nobly 
withstood, or of suffering nobly endured. What is it that 
we gather and garner up from the solemn story of the world, 
like its struggles, its sorrows, its martyrdoms ? Come to 
the great battle, thou wrestling, glorious, marred nature ! 
strong nature! weak nature! — come to the great battle, 
and, in this mortal strife, strike for immortal victory ! The 
highest Son of God — the best beloved of Heaven that ever 
stood upon earth — was " made perfect through sufferings." 
And sweeter shall be the cup of immortal joy, for that it 
was once dashed with bitter drops of pain and sorrow ; and 
brighter shall roll the everlasting ages, for the dark shadows 
that clouded this birthtime of our being. 



LECTUEE III. 

THE MATERIAL WORLD AS THE FIELD OF THE GREAT 
LESION: ITS ADAPTATIONS TO THE END— HUMAN 
CULTURE. 

I have attempted to set fortli in my first lecture, the 
apparent design proposed in the creation of the world — 
human culture ; and in my second, the ground principles 
involved in that design — involved, that is to say, in those 
material and moral agencies, that belong to the present 
constitution of things. A scene there must be, a place, a 
sphere for human activity ; a free will in man to act his 
pleasure ; and from such a condition and nature I have con- 
tended that it was impossible — as far as we can conceive — 
that it was shown by the very terms of the statement to be 
impossible, to exclude all evil. This principle I believe to 
be incontrovertible. There are difficulties about its appli- 
cation ; there are difficulties about the details, and to these 
it is my special business in these lectures to address myself; 
but there is no difficulty about the principle. 

I shall now proceed, and especially in the present lec- 
ture, to consider this material world, as the sphere of human 
activity and culture. 

The Rev. Thomas Burnet — an English divine of the 
17th century — in a book of his, called " The Sacred Theory 
of the Earth," imagines the world originally to have been 
literally a perfect sphere. " In this smooth earth," he says, 
" were the first scenes of the world, and the first generations 
of mankind ; it had the beauty of youth and blooming na- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 53 

ture, fresh and fruitful ; and not a wrinkle, scar, or fracture 
in all its body ; " — (and what do you think he means by 
" no wrinkle nor scar " ?) — why, " no rocks nor mountains," 
he says, " no hollow caves nor gaping channels, but even and 
uniform all over. And the smoothness of the earth made 
the heavens so too ; the air was calm and serene ; none of 
those tumultuary motions and conflicts of vapors, which the 
mountains and the winds cause in ours ; it was suited to a 
golden age, and to the first innocency of nature." * 

It is strange that, even to this eccentric writer, such a 
world should have seemed a desirable place, or even habit- 
able. But suppose the reverse of this ; suppose the earth 
to have been ridged all over with lofty mountains, withoul 
intervening plain, ocean or river, and it is still more obvi- 
ous that it would have been completely uninhabitable ; at 
least by any such race as now occupies it. 

In a happy medium between the inaccessible mountain 
and the unbroken plain, lies the lap of earth to receive and 
nourish the children of men. They grow and multiply in 
the fruitful valleys ; they nestle under the covert and shad- 
ow of mountain ranges, which send down refreshing breezes 
upon them ; they line the river banks and the shores 
of the sea with their villages and cities, and launch forth 
from them their ships for distant voyages. And in the 
most obvious view, this arrangement is necessary to human 
growth, intercourse, and culture ; and not only so, but to 
human subsistence. "Without level grounds there could not 
be productive agriculture ; without mountains there could 
not be gushing springs nor flowing streams ; without 
oceans and the immense evaporation from their surface, 
there could not be cloud nor rain ; and without refreshing 
rains and irrigating rivers, there could be no vegetable 
growth ; and man and beast alike must perish from the 
face of the earth. 

But this adjustment of the earth to human subsistence, 
comfort, and culture ; let us consider it more nearly. 

* P. 76, London ed., 1816. 



54 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

The earth is a globe ; and so small is the deviation from 
a perfect sphere caused by the highest mountains, that the 
Davalagiri in Asia, 28,000 feet high, stands above the level 
only as the twelfth of an inch would on an artificial globe of 
ten feet in diameter.* It does not belong to us to decide, 
scarcely to inquire, whether some other form for the world 
would have answered the purpose. It is evident that a 
square or any irregular figure, or simply a vast and level 
extension, would have been unfavorable to its revolutions 
on its axis, or its free movement in space. All the other 
heavenly bodies are spherical ; this is the form chosen by 
the Infinite Builder and Maker. The earth then is a globe ; 
and it follows that some portions of it must be less favor- 
ably situated for human comfort and culture than others. 
If it be asked why this inequality, this inconvenience, this 
evil is permitted ; why the burning zone is assigned to 
some for residence, and the cold Arctic regions to others ; 
the answer is, that in the system of things this was inevita- 
ble. Here, in fact, and especially in the northern cold, is 
the problem of evil again — the problem of evil for the 
Greenlander ; and he can rationally solve it in no other 
way. But suppose that some other form had been chosen, 
by which these particular inconveniences would have been 
avoided ; and while we are indulging our imagination, let 
us somewhat extend the field ; let us conceive of certain 
other arrangements that might have been made for human 
comfort. Suppose, for instance, that the earth had been 
covered over, at convenient distances, with houses, built as 
a part of the world, of ever-during stone and rock ; and that 
near these dwellings had grown trees, for shade and for 
fruit ; and that around them had spread fields and farms. 
And suppose too, that roads, aye, and railroads, of nature's 
workmanship, had run all over the earth, just where 
they were needed ; or that in the ocean, there had been 
vast currents, running opposite ways; one from America 
to Europe, to bear our ships, and another from Europe 

* Guyot's Comparative Physical Geography, p. 34. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 55 

to America, to bring them back : suppose all this. Should 
we like this stereotyped order? Should we not wish to 
alter the houses, the grounds, the groves, the roads, to suit 
our taste or convenience ? I scarcely ever knew a man to 
buy a house but he must needs alter it, to make it suit him. 
But the same houses, the same estates, the same arrange- 
ments, for all generations, rude and civilized — it would be 
intolerable. It would be a solid barrier against all improve- 
ment. No ; better that the world, rough, wild, shaggy, be 
given to man as it is, to mould it as he will. And I do not 
doubt he will yet mould it into such a garden of plenty, 
such an abode of beauty and happiness, as we cannot now 
conceive of; far better than that exact plan — that world for 
drones, which some might prefer. ]STo ; man is better cared 
for, by not being cared for too much. The world is given 
to him, as the raw material, to work upon. That fact is the 
basis of his whole earthly culture. 

But passing by this general form and structure of the 
earth, I wish to show how things are adjusted and adapted 
to human subsistence, development and improvement ; and 
that, far more admirably and exquisitely, than they would 
be by any such arrangement of houses, farms, roads or 
ocean currents, as I have just supposed. For this purpose, 
I shall consider, first, some of the general arrangements of 
nature ; secondly, some of the specific adaptations of the 
world to man, and of man to the world ; and thirdly, cer- 
tain ministrations of nature to still higher ends in the sphere 
of human culture. 

Under the first head, I must mention certain arrange- 
ments — not, indeed, to convey any new knowledge to many 
of you ; but I must remind you of them ; they belong to 
the survey we are taking of the world as a place of human 
abode ; and their very familiarity may lead us to overlook 
their importance. 

The world is constructed to be the abode of human life, 
and to nurture the means and provisions of that life. For 
this purpose it must be supplied with food and drink ; and 



56 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

it must be heated, ventilated, and refreshed with mois- 
ture. 

The way in which these ends are accomplished is marked 
with such design, such adjustment, restraint and modifica- 
tion of nature's forces — nay, such actual departure from 
nature's ordinary methods, when it is necessary, that it is 
worthy of most reverent heed and consideration. It shows 
not only that there was care for a general material order, 
but care for man. 

I. Thus, for warming the earth ; is the sun's heat suffi- 
cient ? I imagine that most persons never thought of any 
other as necessary ; and yet it is certain that another is as 
necessary as the sun. The world-dwelling is warmed in 
part by a furnace ; out of sight, and to most persons out of 
mind ; and yet without which it would be uninhabitable. 
ISTo doubt is now entertained, among geologists, that the 
centre of the earth, if not a molten and fiery mass, is far hotter 
than the surface ; and that the surface derives part of its 
warmth from that source. But then, if the heat at the centre 
were far greater than it is, it might make a hotbed of the 
whole earth : it might produce enormous growths, like 
those of the pre-Adamite earth ; when the fern and the 
brake grew eighty feet high — fit, indeed, to make coalbeds 
(which they did make), but not fit for human sustenance. 
If the central heat were greater still, it would destroy all 
vegetation. But if, on the contrary, there were no heat in 
the world itself, if it were a mass penetrated throughout 
with icy coldness, it may be easily seen that no heat from 
the sun falling upon its frozen bosom, could make it a fruit- 
ful, or desirable, or habitable abode for man. 

But further, the regions of the equator, over which the 
sun passes and upon which he pours down his direct rays, 
are liable to be too hot ; and the regions of the pole, upon 
which his rays fall slant and oblique, too cold. This, I 
have said, in the nature of things, was unavoidable. But 
what is there to modify and temper these extremes ? On 
the line of the equator the earth bulges out, so that its diameter 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 57 

from east to west is twenty-six miles greater than from north 
to south. Now it is found, from boring into the earth, and 
from examining the temperature of mines at different depths, 
that the heat increases on descending, at the rate of about 
one degree for fifty feet ; that is to say, that any swell on 
the earth, or any mountain mass, would be — the internal 
heat alone considered — one degree colder for every fifty feet 
of height — twenty degrees for every thousand feet. Doubt- 
less other things are to be considered ; and especially the 
warmth of the sun and air around the mountain sides ; and 
we do not know the conditions of this central heat. Of 
course the calculation cannot be applied with any exactness ; 
but taking into account simply the swell of the earth around 
the equator — inasmuch as the surface at the equator is about 
thirteen miles farther from the centre of the internal heat 
than the surface at the poles, it seems not unreasonable to 
infer that the warmth from this source is less within the 
tropics. That is to say, if there were no external source of 
heat, no sun shining directly upon it, the now burning zone 
would be the coldest part of the earth. 

But above this swelling up of the earth in the equatorial 
regions, rise again the highest mountains in the world. 
From these heights the land regularly declines, all the way 
to the pole ; each mountain range lower as you proceed, 
each plateau lower, from the lofty table land of Tubet in 
Asia, 14,000 feet above the level of the ocean, to the steppes 
of Tartary, and the great plains of Siberia in the extreme 
North ; or to take it in the New "World, from Chimborazo, 
21,000 feet high, to the table land of Mexico, 7,500 feet 
high, and the plateau of Inner California, 6,000, and so on- 
ward to the plains of Oregon and Hudson's Bay. The equa- 
torial mountains rise to the height of from twenty to nearly 
thirty thousand feet. 

On ascending these mountains, at an elevation of about 
fifteen thousand feet from the base, we reach the point of 
perpetual congelation. Above this, rise the snowy heights 
— stupendous icehouses to cool the regions below — reservoirs 



58 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

of water too, to refresh them ; and without which neither 
plant nor animal nor man could have lived there.* Now 
if a contrary disposition had been made; if low and level 
valleys had prevailed near the equator, and the highest 
mountains had risen within the arctic circle, it is evident 
that both would have been uninhabitable. 

Let us now turn from the land to the water. Nearly 
three fourths of the earth's surface is covered with water. 
The Pacific Oceaii alone, it is computed, occupies more space 
than all the dry land. It may seem a strange disproportion 
of waste and apparently useless water, to fruitful soil. 
But let us consider it. This soil can yield nothing without 
a certain amount of moisture. A certain amount — neither 
more nor less ; too much would saturate and debilitate the 
vegetation, too little would dry it up. Now the sea is the 
source of moisture, the nurse of rains. Evaporation lifts up 
the watery particles into the air ; whence they are borne 
upon the land, to fall in showers, to distil in dew, to bathe 
the mountain heights, whence they gush forth in springs, 
gather into streams, and form and feed the mighty rivers ; 
and for all these purposes, the supply is, in the general, just 
what is wanted ; neither too much, nor too little. But this 
evaporation from the sea ; what does it give us ? Pure 
water ; an extract from the mass, as exactly separated as if 
it were distilled in an alembic. Suppose that the saline 
particles were lifted into the air, to fall in rain, and flow in 
the rivers ; that it rained brine, and that brackish and bitter 
waters flowed in all our streams and fountains ! "What an 
element indeed — what a blessing is pure water ! — the most 
exquisite refreshment of thirst, the only cleanser of impu- 
rity for the human skin and for all that pertains to human 
use, the only healthful solvent of vegetable food for the daily 
meal. And suppose that the pure springs or the medicinal 
waters were turned into bursting fountains of champagne 
wine ; it would seem as if nature, in her secret caverns, had 
plotted for our destruction ! And I confess that I am struck, 

* I am indebted for these estimates to Guyot's Lectures. 



ON THE PEOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 59 

not only with the blessing and beauty, but with the mys- 
tery of this element. We know nothing of the hidden con- 
nection between its particles, by which it is a -flowing liquid, 
instead of a mere conglomeration of atoms. If it were 
poured into our cup and bowl, as disintegrated albeit golden 
sands, we conld neither drink it, nor wash in it. More 
wonderful than any enchanted cup, is "that which we daily 
put to our lips ; choicer than all the cosmetics of Arabia, is 
that morning ablution ; and well might it be, every morn- 
ing, as an outpoured oblation of pure thanksgiving. And 
when it falls in refreshing rain — in the fine rain upon the 
mown grass — who can help sometimes thinking what it 
would have been if it had come down in sheets of water ; 
how it would have deluged and crushed the tender herb be- 
neath ? 

But why is the sea salt f Or what purpose is served by 
its saltness ? Professor Maury, of the "Washington Observa- 
tory, has given to this question an answer of singular inter- 
est. He has shown that the whole oceanic circulation de- 
pends mainly upon this quality of saltness. And upon this 
circulation depends again the tempering of all climates, both 
hot and cold. For if the ocean stood still, then increasing 
masses of ice in the north, and increasing heat at the equa- 
tor, would make both zones uninhabitable. Of this oceanic 
circulation, the Gulf Stream is an example ; but there are 
other currents no less remarkable. The arctic voyagers, 
wintering in Davis's Straits and "Wellington Channel, found 
themselves drifted southward by a surface current — in one 
instance, a thousand miles in nine months — while, at the 
same time, icebergs, sunk deep in the water, and taking 
the effect of an undercurrent, were borne the very opposite 
way — borne northward, through crashing fields of ice, at 
the rate, in one instance^ of four knots an hour. 

But how is this effect produced ? The immense equato- 
rial evaporation — i. e. the taking up of immense quantities 
of water — lowers the sea level. A surface current from the 
north flows down to supply the deficiency. This indeed 



60 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

would take place if the sea were fresh. But in salt water, 
as the evaporation does not take up the salt, it leaves the 
surface water Salter, i. e. heavier. Consequently it sinks ; 
and thus, by its momentum, it prepares in the depths of the 
the equatorial seas an undercurrent, which flows north- 
ward. In an ocean of fresh water, this result would be 
superficial and partial. 

But let us look at other ministries of the ocean. 

At first sight it would seem as if this ocean barrier 
would separate nations — shut them up in solitariness and 
isolation. But what is made of this seeming obstacle? 
"Why, in fact, nothing is made a medium of intercourse be- 
tween distant nations like the ocean ; and intercourse is 
the grand educator, civilizer. If Europe had been separated 
from ns by 3,000 miles of land, we might hardly have 
reached her yet ; or rather she might have hardly reached 
us — hardly have discovered this quarter of the world. Or 
if some wandering tribes had found their way over the inter- 
vening distance, there would nevertheless have been little or 
no intercourse. The vast plains of Asia were traversed only 
by here and there a trader or caravan, or else by invading 
armies. Invasion perhaps was better for the world 's culture 
than sterile seclusion — than the sitting apart and alone, 
each people and nation alone, amidst hereditary and un- 
broken ideas and customs. But now the commerce of the 
seas is peacefully doing that which war did of old. It is 
bringing all nations acquainted with one another, interfus- 
ing their spirit and life blood, binding them together, and 
making brethren of hostile races ; and, at the same time, 
opening the common fund of earth's bounties and blessings 
to every clime and country. The dread barrier of the sea 
has melted away into a liquid plain, best fitted to buoy up 
and bear on our vessels ; better for intercourse than if it 
were spanned with bridges, or crossed in every direction by 
causeways of stone or railroads of ever-during iron. And if 
there be a few persons — and I confess myself to be one of 
them — who would prefer the causeways and the railroads — 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. (Jl 

prefer any conceivable locomotion to a sea voyage, yet 
nature's plan is not to gratify the few, but to benefit the 
many. And I cannot help thinking that art will yet find 
means to relieve this horrible misery, this sickness of the sea. 

It was indeed a dread barrier to those who first saw it ; 
but what was its effect ? It tempted their courage and enter- 
prise : it called out their energy, hardihood and skill, and 
has thus contributed, along with intercourse and commerce, 
to make them the most prosperous and civilized people in the 
world ; witness the Egyptians, the Phenicians, the Greeks, 
the Romans, and the modern European and American com- 
munities. Everywhere the highest civilizations have found 
their home upon the shores of the sea, and upon the rivers 
that flowed down into it. The ship is the most significant 
emblem in the scutcheon of freedom, polity, and progress. 
One has termed it " that swan of the sea ; " but it is like 
anything but a swan, to the unpractised beholder. I remem- 
ber the first time that I saw a ship part from the shore — the 
solid shore as one well feels it to be at such a moment : all 
was solid, firm, calm, quiet here ; but there, all was alive, 
and seemed rushing upon some unknown fate ; the roaring 
of the wind in the cordage, the swelling of the sails to the 
breeze, the straining of every yard and mast, and, as it 
seemed , to me, of every mighty rib in the almost living 
mass, inspired me with a sort of terror. Bat the strong- 
hearts that swayed it felt no terror ; every motion was easy 
to them, every rope in the complicated network that bound 
it was familiar ; and under their charge it swept over the 
deep, as free and fearless as if it were some huge seabird 
seeking its own natural element. 

But before leaving this element, water, I must advert to 
another and still more remarkable arrangement. I have 
ventured to say, that nature, when it is necessary, departs 
apparently from her own laws. Thus it is laid down as a 
law in physics, that il heat expands all bodies," and so 
makes them lighter. Conversely, cold contracts all bodies, 
and makes them heavier. This is the law. Suppose, now, 



62 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

that the philosopher had never seen ice, or had never before 
thought of this remarkable fact, that cold, freezing water 
into ice, does not contract, but expands it, and thus makes 
it lighter than water. It certainly would seem to him like 
something miraculous ; but how would his astonishment in- 
crease, when he saw the end to be accomplished by this 
deviation from law ! Ice now floats upon the surface, and 
protects from freezing, the water beneath. But suppose that 
every drop of water frozen, became like lead, and sank to 
bottom. Then would our lakes, and probably our rivers too, 
become every winter solid masses of ice, which no spring 
gales nor summer suns could thaw — so as to make the earth 
habitable. " It struck me with awe, when I first knew 
this " — said one who mentioned this fact to me * — " nature 
violating one of her own laws for human benefit ! " 

But to return : I have spoken of evaporation from the 
sea. But evaporation would be useless, if its burden were 
not borne from the sea to the land. How is it borne % If 
there were vast curtain-like fans hung over the deep, and 
worked by some stupendous machinery above, to waft the 
ocean vapors to the shore, we should say, there is a provis- 
ion ! But equally a provision, though noiseless and unseen, 
is the power that sets in motion the boundless waves of air. 
That is heat. Heated air rises, and the colder air flows in 
to supply its place. Hence, as you know, the regular sea- 
breezes upon all islands and coasts. Hence the less regular 
alternations and changes of the wind daily, varied also by 
the intervention of trees, groves, hills, and mountains. But 
the same provision has a wider sweep, in the monsoons, and 
especially in the trade winds. The heated air upon and 
near the equator, constantly rising, creates a constant ten- 
dency in the lower strata of the atmosphere to that quarter ; 
the motion of the earth on its axis gives it a turn to the 
west, like the water on a grindstone : on the ocean it has 
an unimpeded course, and is there a regular or trade wind ; 
when it has spent its force in that direction, it turns back, 
* Daniel Webster. 



ON THE PKOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 63 

from reaction, from accumulation perhaps we might say, 
toward the north and east — thus giving us prevailing west 
winds ; and thus it spreads its breezes, laden with refresh- 
ment, over all the continents. Thus by intermingled land 
and water, heat and cold, the earth is fanned with healthful 
airs ; the extremes of every climate are tempered ; the 
torrid zone parts with its heat to the north ; the polar cold 
sweeps across continents and seas, to cool the burning line ; 
and not one of those " sightless couriers of the air," goes 
without commission. 

Kepler, the German astronomer, believed that the earth 
was a huge animal, that breathes in winds and tides, and 
bellows and belches out its fury in volcanoes, and shakes 
the world with throes, which are earthquakes. I once knew 
a man who held the same opinion. And as he took me 
over his plantation, it was curious, and if sometimes ludi- 
crous, not altogether uninteresting, to see how he talked and 
felt about it. "There it wanted to be scratched" — where 
the plough was needed ; and " there it needed a plaster " — 
where the spot was barren. It seemed a harmless thought, 
and better so to animal ize nature, than to drive all life out 
of it. I had rather believe with Kepler or with Berkeley, 
than to see the world as a stolid substance — the petrified or 
fossil remains of an extinct energy. Everywhere, seen or 
unseen, is action, movement, life — free, flowing, endless. 
There are rivers in the ocean, like the Gulf Stream — aye, 
thousands of feet deep — that flow from continent to conti- 
nent, bearing warmth in their bosom, and tempering the 
climates of whole countries. The earth, too, is bursting 
with vegetable life through all its pores ; the flowing sap, 
the breathing leaves, the waving grass, all speak of life. 
Light, heat, electric fires, play over its surface ; the air 
vibrates to perpetual sounds ; the sea rolls with unceasing 
tides ; the forest trees are filled with music ; in summer and 
autumn days, it seems as if the hillsides and the thickets 
and the thick grass panted with singing, chirping, joyous, 
melodious life. The hum that comes up from all the earth 



64: ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

is a living voice from its bosom. The summer breeze, that 
falls in frolic gusts and eddies upon the thicket and the 
shrubbery and the tall grass, makes them leap and dance 
and sway as to moods of laughter — like children turned out 
to play. The serene heaven that bends over us — meteor 
of beauty as it is — is not more beauteous, nor more tilled 
with a celestial presence, than the fair world that lies be- 
neath. Matter 1 It is time to give up the old Manichsean 
ideas ; even science demands it, as well as religion. It is 
not obstruction, but manifestation of the Divinity. It is not 
the cast-off exuviae of a dead and departed power, but the 
flexible and ever-flowing garment of the Infinite Life. 

II. We have surveyed now, in their most general form, 
the great and palpable elements that go to make habitable 
and comfortable and agreeable this earthly home for man 
— land, water, and air. There is another view which I wish 
to present to you, and that is, not only of the general, but 
of the specific adjustment of things to human use, and of 
man himself to the sphere in which he lives. 

It does not seem to me irreverent to look upon the 
Divine Power which is working in all things around us, as 
working with infinite skill ; as adjusting things with wonder- 
ful adaptation to their purposes. I have said before that 
there are natural impossibilities ; as for instance, a thing 
cannot be heavy and light, or opaque and transparent at 
the same time ; as a thing's being best fitted for a general 
and permanent end, may preclude its being equally fitted 
for a limited and temporary emergency. But while that is 
not achieved which is not possible in the nature of things, 
the study of nature will delight us, by showing that all 
which is possible, is achieved / that all the good is accom- 
plished that is possible, all the evil avoided that is possible. 

Thus to take the physical adaptation of the human being 
himself to the scene : when a man falls into the water, we 
might for the moment wish he were light as cork, that he 
might not drown ; his drowning is an evil, concerning which 
one may ask, why is it ? or, why is it not avoided ? And 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 65 

then again, if he were pushing against a beam that threat- 
ened to fall upon his child, one might wish, for the moment, 
that he were as heavy and solid as a rock. He is neither 
so heavy nor so light. In short, his weight is adjusted to 
more general purposes, to more permanent situations, to the 
entire sphere he moves in ; and to the strength of the sinews 
which are to move the weight. Now this weight, you 
know, must depend on the size and density of the world in 
which he is placed ; *. e., upon the attraction of gravitation. 
In the sun, it would be twenty-eight times as great as it is 
here ; in Jupiter, two-and-a-half times ; in Mercury, only 
half as great ; in the moon, only one-sixth. With the 
heavier weight, he could have done nothing ; he could 
have neither worked nor walked. With the lighter, he 
would have lost the force, the momentum necessary to his 
daily taskwork, to his useful activity in every way. His 
weight, in short, is exactly adjusted to his sphere and 
strength. 

Look again at the natural substances and products which 
he is cultivating or using in agriculture, in the mechanic 
arts in every form. If garden vines, instead of running on 
the ground, had risen up into the air, they could not have 
sustained the melon and cucumber. If wheat, on the con- 
trary, had lain upon the ground, it would have lacked the 
sun and air to ripen the grain. The tree — the forest tree, 
that is — is to answer a different purpose ; and what is that ? 
To furnish timber for building. In its forest state the 
growth is thick ; and the consequence is, that the lower 
branches die and fall off, and a long trunk is provided, 
which answers the purpose. If it had grown sparsely, it 
would have been, as we see it in the open field, unfit to be 
hewn into beams, or to be sawed into boards. And so if it 
had been much heavier or lighter, harder or softer, tougher 
or more brittle, than it is, it would have less well answered 
its purpose. 

And what could we have done at all with it, if some 
metal had not been provided which could be sharpened 
5 



QQ ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

into the axe, the saw, and planing tool. Iron — from which 
steel is made, and which is the only metal, I believe, capa- 
ble of a similar hardening — is the most useful metallic sub- 
stance in the world. I look upon its internal structure as 
one of the most wonderful proofs of design and skill. No 
other metal could supply its place ; not gold nor silver, be- 
cause they are too ductile and flexible ; nor copper, because 
it is too brittle. Iron is malleable, and it can be melted, so 
that it can be moulded and beaten into all possible shapes ; 
but its peculiarity, that which gives it its special value, is a 
certain toughness, a certain power of resistance, a texture 
making it fit for cutting, which is laid in its internal struc- 
ture. "We know nothing of that mysterious, interior con- 
stitution ; but we see the result — that without Avhich civili- 
zation would have been greatly impeded, if not forever held 
back even from its present degree of advancement. 

And, accordingly, iron is more abundant in the world 
than any other metal, or all others put together. Gold is 
comparatively rare, and depends upon this consideration, as 
well as its freedom from liability to rust and tarnish, for its 
extraordinary value. Both fit it for that most important 
agency of being a circulating medium, or a current repre- 
sentative of all sorts of value. Nor is it likely that the 
mines of California and Australia, will yield much more 
than a needful supply, for the growing wants of commerce 
and civilization. This is not the first time that the world 
has been dazzled with visions of boundless accumulation. 
The mines of Mexico and Peru, awakened very much the 
same feeling in the sixteenth century. And among the 
Phenicians of old, as Heeren tells lis,* there was a very 
similar excitement about the mines in Spain. The ships of 
Tarshish, mentioned in Scripture, were Phenician vessels 
sailing out of Tartessus (Tarshish), in Spain ; and it was 
said in that time, that not only were the ships laden with 
gold, but that their anchors were made of gold. 

We .might pass now, in this brief survey, from the 

* Works, vol. i. p. 328-329. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 67 

mineral to the animal kingdom. That certain quadrupeds, 
birds, and fishes were destined to be food for man, is a point 
not questioned, I believe, in any sound physiology. I con- 
fess for myself to a feeling of dislike to this system of de- 
struction. I do not like to hunt or fish for the same reason ; 
but I believe that the feeling is more scrupulous than wise. 
It is no greater hardship for animals to die by the hand of 
man than by the claw or fang of their fellows — not so 
great ; and sudden destruction is better than to die untended, 
of lingering decay. Indeed, if they died of disease or de- 
cay, the very carrion of their remains would fill the world 
with pestilence. Nor is the amount of animal happiness 
lessened ; immediate transformation into new life takes 
place ; and the world is always as full of animal life as it 
can bear. 

But there is another use of the animal kingdom to man, 
which indicates a no less striking adaptation. Certain ani- 
mals were evidently made to be domesticated — to be the 
companions and helpers of man. For this there is a fitness 
in their nature, structure, size, strength, habitudes, and very 
instincts. Eot the lion, the tiger, the hippopotamus and 
the hyena are so fitted, but the horse, the ox, the cow, the 
camel, the ass and the faithful dog. And it has been well 
observed that the want of most of these animals among our 
own aboriginal races, was of itself enough to prevent any 
great advance in civilization. 

]N~or are the wild tribes of creatures useless to man. 
They make the scene of the world gay and beautiful. They 
make nature vocal. They supply man with food ; they 
clothe him with furs. They preserve the world from putre- 
faction and pestilence. Offensive smells would make our 
summer walks hateful, but for them. The hyena, the vul- 
ture, the very worm is a scavenger. The cleanliness of the 
animal and insect tribes themselves, is most worthy of no- 
tice. The feathers of birds, the hair of quadrupeds, the 
sharded wings of insects, take no soil. The most delicately 
kept child is not neater, than the bug in the dunghill. And 



68 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

thus, by structure, by instincts, by the pursuit of food, life is 
caused to spring from decay and corruption ; and the house 
of nature is kept clean and pure, without service or drud- 
gery or toil. 

III. But I must leave these details, in order to find 
space for two or three observations on the general and yet 
urgent adaptation of material nature, not merely to human 
support and comfort, but to the higher spiritual culture. 
We shall not exhaust the theme here ; for we cannot con-! 
sider the human constitution, as we propose to do in a 
future lecture, without referring to the circumstances in 
which it is placed, to the outward agencies by which it is 
developed. But there are two or three views of nature's 
influence, which press themselves upon our attention now, 
because they help to complete the general survey of it as a 
material organization. For it is not enough to say that na- 
ture has provided a home for man through the combined 
agencies of the earth and ocean and atmosphere, or that she 
has adjusted the objects of the vegetable, mineral, and animal 
creation to his use ; for she has still more distinct and sig- 
nificant appeals to his intelligence and moral culture. 

There are certain arrangements in nature, then, which are 
evidently fitted to answer a double purpose to man — a lower 
and a higher ; to give sustenance and pleasure and practical 
direction, and at the same time to impart higher knowledge 
and guidance. The arrangements I shall instance are the 
fertility, the order, and the beauty of nature. 

In the first place, with regard to the fertility of the soil : 
the primary object is manifest. But has it never occurred 
to any one who cultivates the soil, to ask why it was not 
made twice or ten times as fertile as it is now ; or why, 
when exhausted by a crop, it could not have been entirely, 
as it is in part, restored and replenished by the air. By 
these means labor would have been relieved to an im- 
mense extent. We are apt unthinkingly to take the exist- 
ing system as if it could not have been otherwise. But a 
slight change in fertility — i. e., a soil twice as fertile, or a hu- 



ON THE PKOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. @9 

man organization demanding only half as much food, would 
have relieved many a heavy burden, Ay, there is a hard 
strain upon human energy. It is the straining of the very 
sinews to the task. Kay, all work is hard, because field- 
work is hard. For if this had been relieved, human ener- 
gies might easily have achieved the rest — the building, the 
manufacturing, the artisan's work in every kind. 

Look, then, at this fact of moderated fertility, and see 
what it means. 

I say moderated fertility ; for it might as easily have 
been less as more. You sometimes, as you travel, pass 
through a district, or by a farm, of which you rather dis- 
dainfully say, " it must be a hard scramble for life here ; 
you would not try it, for your part." But suppose the 
whole world had been as barren and intractable, or worse. 
What then % "Why, then had we been a race of miserable 
drudges. Then too had there been no place for society ; no 
place for the cultivation of the sciences and elegant arts ; 
no seventh day of perfect rest, no altar nor priesthood ; but 
all the refinements of life, all its mental culture, its graceful 
arts, its religious ordinances, and all the splendor of its 
cities, palaces, and temples, would have been buried under 
the crushing oppression of cheerless toil. You, my friends, 
would not have been here, listening to a lecture upon this 
subject, or any other subject ; but you would all have been 
abroad upon the sterile earth, cutting away the intractable 
forest, levelling the rugged hills, digging, delving, drudging 
for a bare subsistence. 

But turn now to the more attractive side of the picture ; 
and suppose a soil so prolific that the labor of an hour would 
suffice for the wants of a week ; and what then would fol- 
low ? Why, then would man have been turned out to idle 
vagrancy, or sunk into voluptuous sloth : and the moral 
fortunes of the world would have been as certainly wrecked 
and ruined by indulgence as, on the former supposition, 
they would have been by hardship. 

But this leads me to notice a still more exact and careful 



70 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

adjustment of the law. The zones of the earth are as much 
marked by difference of strength and of wants in the inhab- 
itants, as by difference of heat in the climate. The men of 
the torrid zone have not the physical vigor of the North- 
men. The labor, therefore, that is light and easy in the 
Xorth, to the more delicate frame and languid temperament 
of the inhabitants of the torrid zone, would be an over- 
whelming task, crushing both to body and mind. Accord- 
ingly their wants are fewer. They require less food, 
less clothing, less fuel, less expensive buildings. In the 
northern regions, where man is more vigorous, more pro- 
tection is needed, and stronger diet — more of animal food. 
The Hindoo's dish of rice, would not suffice for the hunter 
and miner on the steppes of Siberia. To the Esquimaux 
and Greenlanders, a bountiful dish of whale oil is said to be 
a delicacy. The northern voyagers, Parry and Franklin, 
found that their crews^ were obliged to live almost entirely 
on animal food ; they lost vigor and cheerfulness without 
it — a fact worthy of some account with our extreme diete- 
tic systems. 

And then, observe, in fine, by what means, by what 
agents this general adjustment of fertility is effected — the 
air, the wind, the rain, the mouldering forest leaves and 
disintegrated particles from the surface of mountain rocks, 
the fire in the woods, the volcano in the abyss. Wild ele- 
ments, undefined instruments seemingly they are ; and yet 
they all conspire to produce a certain degree of fertility. 
Any considerable swaying either way, and that balance 
would have been disturbed in which the moral destinies of 
the world are weighed. Truly, " the winds are His angels, 
and the flaming fires His ministers." Truly, " He weigheth 
the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance." 

Again, in the order of nature, we see a double purpose — 
the one referring to practical convenience, to the guidance 
of daily action and industry ; the other, to the cultivation 
of the mind — lying, indeed, at the foundation of all science. 
Without the first we could do nothing ; without the last 
we could learn nothing. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 71 

The first purpose is answered by many obvious arrange- 
ments. If the sun did not daily rise and set ; if day and 
night did not duly succeed each other ; if the year did not 
bring . about its circuit, and the seasons did not revolve in 
fixed cycles ; if summer and winter, seedtime and harvest, 
did not know their place ; if all the elements did not obey 
certain laws ; if the fire did not burn, nor water fall, nor 
food nourish, nor the seed produce the plant, nor the plant 
yield seed, with invariable sequence, we could do nothing 
upon any regular plan ; the whole action and industry of life 
would be brought to a stand. Throw all this into confu- 
sion, and man would stand aghast, and would soon sink and 
perish, the victim of that boundless disorder. He cannot 
take a step but by lines, which nature has drawn all around 
him for his guidance. 

But now let it be observed that the order of nature is 
not limited to the purpose of furnishing this palpable guid- 
ance. Because the order of nature embraces a thousand 
things which the common eye cannot see ; with which com- 
mon prudence has nothing to do. The law, for instance, of 
definite proportions in chemistry — that is, that so many 
parts of hydrogen mix with so many parts of oxygen to form 
water, and so in all the chemical compounds, and that they 
will mix in no other than certain definite proportions — this 
has nothing to do with the common uses, of water or iron, 
of lead or tin, in their common forms. So the laws of 
crystallization in minerals, by w T hich gold takes one form 
and quartz another ; the wonderful system of genera and 
species in plants and animals — the resemblances and differ- 
ences so marked ; and the geometric laws that reign over 
the heavenly bodies — these have no palpable, practical uses. 
Then again to go into the animal creation — though the 
horse, the ass, and the ox had not stood before us as distinct 
species ; though their forms and qualities had been blended 
and mixed in such utter confusion that it had been impos- 
sible to classify them, still they could have drawn loads and 
borne burdens. Whereto then serves this order in nature ; 



72 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

which partitions it out into realms and ranks ; which pene- 
trates the most secret cells of animal or vegetable life or 
mineral structure, and stretches its sceptre over the bound- 
less spheres of heaven, and binds the universe in sublime 
harmony % The answer is — to teach man. I need not deny 
that it was chosen for its own sake.; but I say it has this 
further advantage and purpose — to teach man. Only 
through this order is science made possible. If it were not 
for this order, and the scientific classification founded upon 
it, the human mind would sink helpless amidst boundless 
diversity and detail. Only through this classification is 
any available language possible. The words animal, min- 
eral, vegetable — beast, bird, fish — stand now for distinct 
classes of objects, bound together by definite affinities. 
Break that bond ; make every object to differ essentially 
from every other ; and then every object, to be pointed out, 
must have a different name ; and the human mind would 
sink as helpless beneath the burden of words as beneath 
the burden of thoughts. There are objects enough on your 
farm or in your warehouse to occupy a life in learning to 
designate them ; the catalogue of your farm or warehouse 
would be as large as a dictionary ; and every other would 
require the same ; and the metes and bounds of knowledge 
would be as narrow as the metes and bounds of your estate. 
Now nature spreads itself before us as a volume, with its 
books and chapters and sections : but let its order be broken 
up, and it would be as a volume in which the words were 
printed hap-hazard, without connection or consequence, 
without statement or conclusion ; and we should learn com- 
paratively nothing. 

This is that sublime order, so attractive and beautiful 
that philosophers, both ancient and modern, have endeavor- 
ed to resolve it into some one primordial principle — Pytha- 
goras and Plato into number or form ; the Germans, 
Schelling and Hegel into some subjective, metaphysic law. 
Auguste Comte imagined at least, that it may be reduced to 
some principle in nature like gravitation. Some such all- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 73 

comprehending unity is the dream of many minds still. 
But fanciful or wise as the search may be, certain it is that, 
without this sublime order, the universe would not be a 
temple of knowledge and worship, but a Babel of utter 
confusion and frustration to all study and inquiry. 

Finally, ~beauty in nature has a double function, though 
somewhat less distinctly marked. 

The colors, green and blue, and the neutral tints, scarcely 
less common, are naturally agreeable to the eye ; and if red 
and yellow were the pervading hues, the organ of sight 
would be dazzled and blinded by them. Then again varie- 
ty, both in color and form, is naturally grateful ; and if all 
the objects in nature were of one shape and of one hue, no 
prison could be so dreadful. To our constitution, therefore, 
nature's garniture is almost as necessary as her substantial 
supplies of food. 

But the beauty of her works ministers to purposes far 
beyond convenience, far beyond utility. It is connected 
with higher laws in us ; it touches a finer sense than of 
good, than of advantage. Beauty, to all who truly know it, 
is a thing divine. Its treasures are poured with lavish abun- 
dance through the world, its banners are spread upon the 
boundless air and sky, to entrance the eye and soul with 
visions of more than earthly loveliness. 

The whole influence of nature's beauty, and of all that is 
akin to its beauty — how manifestly is it divine ! It holds 
no compact with anything base or low. Man may mar and 
desecrate its fairest scenes ; but he can never say to the 
majesty or loveliness of nature, " Thou hast tempted me ! " 
Wicked and hateful passions may break out — jarring upon 
her sublime symphonies, disturbing her holy quiet ; but na- 
ture has no part with them. Did ever the grandeur of the 
midnight heaven, or the thunder in the sky, or the answer- 
ing thunder of the ocean beach, make any man proud ? Did 
the murmurings of the everlasting sea, or the solemn dirge 
of the winter's wind, or the voice of birds in spring, or the 



74 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

flashing light of summer streams, or the mountain's awful 
brow, or the vales 

" Stretching in pensive quietness between," 

did ever these make any man rude or ungentle ? Did ever 
the fulness and loveliness of the creation, weighing upon the 
human sense and soul almost with an oppression of joy, 
make any man selfish and grasping ? No ; the true lovers 
of nature are never ignoble nor mean. She would unnerve 
the oppressor's hand, or melt the miser's ice, or cool the vo- 
luptuary's fever, this hour, if he would open his heart to her 
transforming companionship. 

Nor are the treasures of her beauty yet half explored. 
A finer culture of the senses and soul will unfold new won- 
ders. " What powers," says Herder, " are there in each 
one of our senses, which only -necessity, sickness, accident, 
or the failure of the other senses, brings to light ! The 
blind man's acuteness of hearing and touch seems at times 
almost miraculous. May it not be a hint of what is pos- 
sible to all the senses — of powers yet undeveloped in us ? 
Bishop Berkeley observes," he continues, " that light is the 
language of God, of which the most perfect of our senses 
can yet spell but a few elements." * Looking at that grand 
kaleidoscope made on the back of the pianoforte, and which 
doubtless many of you have seen, I was led to think of these 
undeveloped powers of sense, and what visions of supernal 
glory may yet be oj)ened to the eye. What unfolding won- 
ders shall yet burst upon us ; what pictures shall be un- 
rolled to the vision of purer natures ; what seals shall be 
taken from the great deeps of beauty — it may not be for us 
to know in this world. Our sense is dim, our power fee- 
ble ; the present revelation, I suppose, is all that we can 
bear. But the time may come, when there shall visit us 
melodies, such as were never drank in by the ravished ear, 
sights, such as never entranced mortal eye ; when perpetual 
raptures may be felt without exhaustion ; when lofty states 

* The Philosophy of Humanity. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 75 

of mind, such as noble genius and heroism inspire, may be- 
come the habit of the soul, and ecstasy may crowd on ecstasy 
forever. 

Full of moral influence, full of prophecy, full of religion, 
is the true sense of beauty. When I sit down in a sum- 
mer's day, with the shade of trees around me, and the wind 
rustling in their leaves ; when I look upon a fair landscape 
— upon meadows and streams, stealing away through and 
behind the clustering groves ; when the sun goes down be- 
hind the dark mountains or beyond the glorious sea, and 
fills and flushes the deeps of the western sky with purple 
and gold ; when, through the gates of parting day, other 
worlds, other heavens come to view — spheres so distant that 
it takes the light thousands of years to reach us : then only 
one word is great enough to embrace all the wonder — God ! 
Beautifully says a great poet, and no less justly : 

" He looked— 
Ocean and eartb, the solid frame of earth, 
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay, 
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touch'd, 
And in their silent faces did he read 
Unutterable love. Sound needed none, 
Nor any voice of joy : his spirit drank 
The spectacle ; sensation, soul, and form, 
All melted into him ; they swallowed up 
His animal being ; in them did he live, 
And by them did he live ; they were his life. 
In such access of mind, in such high hour 
Of visitation from the living God, 
Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired. 
No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request ; 
Eapt into still communion, that transcends 
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, 
His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power 
That made him." 



LECTTTKE IV. 

THE BODY AND THE SOUL, OR MAN'S PHYSICAL CONSTITU- 
TION: THE MINISTRY OF THE SENSES AND APPETITES. 

The body and the soul — the relation of the body to the 
soul — the ministry of the body to the soul — this is the sub- 
ject of the lecture before us : and I say at once, that it is 
my wish and purpose to vindicate man's physical organiza- 
tion from the charge that it is naturally low and debasing, 
or was ever meant to be so ; that it is my wish and purpose, 
in approaching this heaven-built sanctuary of the soul, to 
offer, not scorn and desecration, but reverence and worship. 

There are two kinds of houses that a man lives in. 
There is the house that the carpenter built. And there is 
this house, that God hath built for the spirit's dwelling. 
The former is built for an end : for the use, for the accommo- 
dation, and, justly considered, for the moral cultivation of 
its inhabitant. Can we suppose less of the latter? The 
body is an organic structure, with a thousandfold more 
contrivance in it than a house, or a whole city of houses. 
But organization is a means to an end. Now this relation 
is what 1 understand by the term philosophy : and I might 
have said, that my lecture this evening is on the philosophy 
of the human organization, senses, and appetites. 

Let me pause upon this point a moment : for I must try 
to keep distinctly before your minds the object of these 
lectures, and to make it constantly appear how legitimate, 
practical, and important that object is ; nay, of what inter- 
est it is to all thoughtful persons. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. f7 

Organization, I say, is a means to an end ; and the per- 
ception of this relation, is philosophy. The philosophy of a 
thing is the knowledge of the end to be answered by that 
thing, and of the means embraced in it to accomplish that 
end. 

I confess that I am somewhat tired of hearing this word, 
philosophy. It was formerly a mystery ; then, afterward, 
it was a terror to religion and faith ; and now, perhaps, it 
has become a weariness. "We have philosophies of every- 
thing. Nevertheless, this constant repetition of the word, 
this fixed direction of thought, I hold to be a very remark- 
able sign, ay, and a very good sign of the time. 

That which is indicated by it, is immeasurably the high- 
est kind of knowledge. Observe that the two elements must 
go together. The knowledge of the means by itself, or of 
the end by itself, is not philosophy, but a very inferior 
thing. Thus, for example, a man may understand the end 
or use of a machine, engine, or implement, without under- 
standing the organization or adjustment of its parts ; and 
then he is not a philosopher, but a mere handicraftsman. 
Or he may consider the parts alone ; he may pore over the 
details of an instrument, the mere isolated facts — and so of 
the great system of nature and life — and go no further, 
think nothing of an ultimate aim, nothing of order, plan, or 
purpose ; and then he is not a philosopher, but a mere 
matter-of-fact man. He who comprehends both the means 
and the end — sees the parts with their relations, and the 
result — is in that regard a philosopher. He may never have 
thought of calling himself such ; he is perhaps a humble 
laborer in the field of life ; but he is, in relation to one thing, 
and may be to many more, a philosopher. Suppose — to illus- 
trate still further the superiority of this kind of knowledge — 
that a small section from the great field of nature were offered 
for inspection, and that it were a quarry of granite. The 
examiner enters it, and ascertains what may be called the 
facts presented ; that is to say, he discovers and distinguishes 
the three elements — quartz, feldspar, and mica. But if he 



78 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

knows nothing further, if all his knowledge and thought 
are shut up in the heart of this quarry, of what interest can 
it be to him ? He might as well know anything else, or 
know nothing. But now suppose that he goes out into the 
world of adaptations and uses ; that he sees the bedded 
rock as a material for building ; and further, that he marks 
upon its upper surface how its particles are crumbling away 
into a soil ; and then traces that soil through vegetable, 
through animal, through human life, to all the majestic 
purposes for which man and. nature are made ; what then 
does he say ? " Philosophy ! " — might he not exclaim — 
" well art thou called divine ; for thou dost unbar the gates 
of wisdom, and pour light and beauty through the world." 

So regarded, the action of life would become thought, 
and its experience, wisdom. Some tendency of this kind, I 
believe, is to be observed, at this day. The world is enter- 
ing upon that state of early manhood whose natural impulse 
it is to ask the reasons of things ; and I cannot but think 
that this word, philosophy, so often repeated, so often 
printed, heading and lettering so many books, is like a 
blazoned banner, going before and leading on a nobler pro- 
gress than the world has yet seen. 

To proceed now with the subject of this lecture : I have 
already explained to you, that my theme is not Natural 
Theology, not a discussion or illustration of the Divine Per- 
fections, as manifested in nature and life. "VVe do indeed 
teach all this indirectly ; it is the grandest interest of this 
subject, as it is of every subject of high philosophy ; but 
our specific object is to show 7 how things in nature and life, 
and so in the human organization, senses, and appetites, are 
framed to answer a certain purpose — to minister to the 
highest of all purposes, the culture of the human soul. 

Now the human frame has much in common with the 
animal organism. All this, though it abundantly manifests 
the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, and would demand 
attention in a system of Natural Theology, I shall leave out 
of the account ; save and in so far as it serves especially to 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 79 

elicit and train the human faculties. "With the benefit cf 
this exception we may fairly say, that the eye and the ear, 
though common to man and animal, have for man a pecu- 
liar, that is to say, a mental and moral instrumentality. 
In considering the ministry of the body to the soul, I shall 
keep in mind this distinction between the human and 
animal organization, because it touches the very point in 
hand. The animal organism ministers to instinct merely ; 
the human, to intellect and moral culture. Take, for in- 
stance, the sense of touch ; which animals possess indeed, 
but in a degree so inferior that, comparatively, they may 
be said not to possess it at all. If, instead of this sensitive 
vesture of feeling, man had been clothed with hide and hair 
and hoof, the human soul had been imprisoned in obstruc- 
tion and stupor. It is the mother's caress that first wakes 
the infant soul to life. The fond embrace is the earliest 
nurture of affection and seal of friendship. In all the ani- 
mal world there is no kiss. The grasp of the hand — all 
over the world the sign of comity and kindness- — is a signifi- 
cant token of the human destiny ; it is the sign manual 
upon the great charter of human brotherhood. Shaking 
hands — it may be a very wearisome thing to a popular 
favorite in a long summer's day ; it may seem to many a 
very unmeaning ceremony ; but it links and binds the race 
in the bonds of moral fraternity. But the whole frame, 
too, is thus sensitive. The air that falls upon it, in softer 
than veils of down, breathes exquisite pleasure through 
every pore. The sense of touch, the eldest born and earliest 
teacher of all the rest, imparts in fact a character to all the 
other senses, and to the whole nature ; so that I am tempted 
to say that the delicacy or torpor of this organization is, for 
any child, one of the clearest prognostics of his future de- 
velopment ; and I doubt whether a man, who can let a fly 
walk all over his face without knowing it, though deep 
powers and passions may dwell within, is ever a man of 
fine, quick, and sympathic sensibility. 

Next, the faculty of speech is peculiar to man. This is 



80 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

given for expression ; but mark that it is given for the ex- 
pression and culture of higher things than are found in ani- 
mal natures. Much may be revealed, it is true, in dumb 
show, in pantomime, or by inarticulate cries ; and animals 
do this : and man's most ordinary wants could be so ex- 
pressed ; and those who maintain that speech was an im- 
mediate, Divine gift to man from his Creator, because it was 
an immediate necessity, seem to me to overlook this fact ; 
besides that a miracle is not to be supposed where a miracle 
is unnecessary ; and I have known two children playing by 
themselves for a single summer, to form a language of their 
own. Neither dumb show, however, nor childish prattle, 
suffices for the higher wants of humanity. For the finer dis- 
criminations of thought and feeling, for the opening and cul- 
ture of the human understanding, cultivated speech is neces- 
sary ; and such, we cannot doubt, is its special office. 

I cannot altogether pass over the wonder of this thing in 
our humanity, though I must not dwell upon it. Language, 
the breath of all human thought, the living tissue of all 
human communication, the telegraphic line that stretches 
through thousands of years, the texture into which are 
woven the character and history of nations and ages — all 
other devices, all other arts sink in comparison with this 
grand instrument, at once of Divine intelligence and human 
ingenuity — the common speech of men. To describe the 
organs of speech, their structure, relations, and action ; and 
then the corresponding organ that receives it, the ear ; and 
then the medium of speech, the subtile and elastic air, would 
require ample treatises. And yet the act of an instant calls 
all these agencies into play. A man utters a word, but one 
word ; and a volume could not describe all that has been 
concentrated in that utterance. Nor to one ear alone does 
the utterance pass, but to many. A man utters a word ; 
and instantly it breaks, as it were, into a thousand particles, 
which pass like sunbeams through the air, and, in one mo- 
ment of time, print an intelligible thought upon the minds 
of thousands. And the might of speech, the power given 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 81 

to a word, the living strength that girds a man when his 
whole nature speaks out — there is no force in the world that 
is felt like that. Justly therefore is the power of God rep- 
resented by a word. " By the Word of the Lord were the 
heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His 
mouth." 

There is another peculiarity in man, of a totally opposite, 
and yet perhaps of a no less significant character; and that 
is laughter. Some men question much about recreation ; 
whether they will have it or have it not ; whether they will 
admit it into their plan. But Heaven has sent it into their 
plan ; and they must have it, whether they will or not. 
ISTay, they laugh about nothing, too — which makes it yet more 
significant in this view. But laughter has a still further 
and higher significance. It is the expression of the mind's 
freest enjoyment. It is like the clapping of hands in an 
assembly — the riotous outbreak in us of pleasure, delight, 
sympathy. It is healthful too, I might say, by the by. 
It helps more to digest a dinner than old wine, or anything 
else fancied to help it. But its highest office is in the deli- 
cacy of apprehension which it indicates. There are twenty 
kinds of laughter, with as many meanings. Laughter is the 
relish of wit, the mockery of folly, the utterance of joy, the 
murmur of approbation, the shout of welcome. It expresses 
what words cannot. It is the flower that bursts from the 
hard, logical stem of talk. Sad were the life in which 
there was no laughter ; sad and bad, I should fear. Men 
do not laugh when they are meditating wicked deeds ; the 
guilty face is serious enough — stern or livid with its serious- 
ness. Sad were the life to which nothing ludicrous ever 
presented itself; it were scarcely human. In fact, laughter 
is perhaps the most distinctive visible mark of our human- 
ity. If an anomalous or masked being were presented be- 
fore us, concerning which we doubted whether it was a man 
— that which would most immediately decide the point in 
his favor, would be a burst of laughter. There are sighs 
6 



82 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

and screams, and there is singing in the animal world, bnt 
not laughter. 

There are other peculiarities in the human organization 
to be noticed. 

One is the countenance. You can conceive, though per- 
haps with difficulty, that on striking an ox or a dog with 
a cruel blow, the animal might turn around upon you, with 
a distinctly human expression of indignation or reproach ; 
as much as to say, " I have my thoughts, and this is cruel." 
If no other feature could express that, the eye might. It 
does not ; that power is not given to the animal face ; if it 
were, it would be such a metamorphosis as would fill us 
with terror, and would penetrate with horror every reck- 
less or savage abuser of the uncomplaining, dumb creatures 
that God has given for his service. But man is made to 
stand erect, and the crowning glory of his person is a coun- 
tenance, every lineament of which is clothed with moral 
expression. The lowering brow of defiance, the cheek 
blanched with indignation, the eye challenging truth, or kill- 
ing with accusation, or veiled and shaded with softening 
pity, the winning sweetness of smiles, the whole manifold 
mirror of radiant goodness and honor — all is moral minis- 
tration. And indeed, speaking of smiles, I think I never savj 
a smile that was not beautiful. Hardly less remarkable, 
perhaps, is the circumstance of every man's face being his 
own, clearly distinguishable from all others. We see the' 
inconvenience, and sometimes fatal inconvenience, of not 
being able to distinguish one man from another, in the very 
few and rare cases of remarkable resemblance. If this were 
common, it would hardly be too much to say that the inter- 
course, the business, the very civilization of the world must 
stop. Not to know certainly whom we talked with, whom 
we traded with, who had told us or promised us this or 
that, whom we had married or who our children were ; the 
world would be thrown into utter confusion ; and all good 
relations would become impossible. To prevent this, there 
is achieved in the human countenance, what seems to me 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. §3 

scarcely short of a miracle. Here it is — a little patch of 
white ground, nine inches long and six wide, with the parts 
the same, the configuration the same, and the hues generally 
the same ; and yet, if all the hundreds of millions of the 
human race were brought together, every man could pick 
out from them all, his friend, with a certainty equal to that 
of his own identity. 

Finally, the human hand is to be mentioned. It serves 
indeed one of the purposes of the animal claw or forefoot — 
■i. e., to obtain food. Taking into account the forearm, the 
arm, and shoulder, it is worthy of note, that a similar for- 
mation prevails throughout the entire animal economy, as 
if nothing more perfect could be devised. That is to say, 
there are the scapulas or shoulder blades, the clavicles or 
collar bones to keep them from pressing upon the chest, the 
arm, the forearm, and the hand, claw, or hoof, as the case 
may be. The same general construction is found in the 
fins of the fish, the wings of the bird, and the foreleg of the 
quadruped. But in man, this organ, I do not say, comes to 
its perfection — for all is perfection, every animal has that 
which is best for itself — but this organ comes in man to 
answer purposes peculiar to himself ; and most of these are 
mental and moral. " The indefeasible cunning " that lies 
in the right hand, has more to do than to procure food. 
For instance, it has to fashion clothing, without which 
there could not be comfort in all climates, nor civilization 
in any. No animal could cut cloth, or sew it, or thread the 
needle. Then again, all the practical arts depend upon the 
hand — building, the use of tools, all skill in making fabrics, 
which is called" manufacturing. Then, all the fine arts 
require the hand — painting, sculpture,, music. Then, once 
more, all writing is handwriting. All human communica- 
tion, beyond that which is oral, all literature, all books, all 
works of genius, all the grandest agencies in the world de- 
pend upon the hand. Yes, in the human hand lies the 
whole moral fortune, the whole civilization, the whole pro- 
gress of humanity. The right arm is a lever that moves 
the world. 



84 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

I have thus spoken of certain parts of the 1mm an organ- 
ism as superior to the animal, and as evidently intended to 
answer a higher purpose — touch, speech, laughter, the 
human face and hand. Let us now consider, in the next 
place, the general ministry of the senses, appetites, and pas- 
sions. 

Some of you, I have no doubt, will feel, when you hear 
these words, appetites and passions, as if I named things that 
are not friends, but enemies to human culture. You have 
associated with them perhaps only ideas of temptation. 
But in the good order of Providence, I am persuaded it will 
always be found that temptation and ministration go to- 
gether, and that ministration is the end, and temptation 
only the incident. Temptation is but another word for 
strong attraction to a thing ; that attraction is necessary, 
and was never meant to be injurious, but useful. I do not 
say, therefore, with some, that powerful passions and appe- 
tites were placed in man on purpose to try his virtue, but 
that they were placed there for other ends; that they are, 
in fact, a necessary part of the human economy ; and that 
the trial is purely incidental, and in fact unavoidable. Just 
as fire was not meant to burn the house, nor, as the main 
intent, to make the keepers vigilant, but simply to warm it, 
though it could not warm, without being liable to burn it. 

I shall solicit attention particularly to this part of the 
human economy, to these fires of appetite and passion in 
the house of life ; because here arises the only moral ques- 
tion about our sensitive constitution ; and I am persuaded 
the question can be met. But I ask the inquirer to see, in 
general, what his simple senses teach him. I ask him to 
consider his own physical frame, fearfully and wonderfully 
made, as the very shrine of wise and good teaching, and to 
listen to the oracle that comes from within. Ay, to the 
oracle ; but remember, it is when nature's flame burns upon 
the altar, and not the strange fire of idolatrous passion. I 
appeal to nature against sensualism ; and am willing to risk 
the cause of virtue on that issue. I will show you — I think, 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 85 

at least, I can show, that simple, natural appetite it is not, 
that leads to vicious and ruinous excess, but something else. 
I concede the liberty in our physical constitution — provided 
it be truly understood — to follow nature. 

" Fatal concession ! " I hear it said. " Fatal concession ! " 
exclaim both ancient philosophy and modern religion. 
" What can the body teach, but evil, error, excess, vice? " 

Let us see. You find yourself possessed with a nature 
other than your spiritual nature ; different from it, inferior 
to it ; and you hastily conclude that because its qualities 
are lower, its uses must be lower, and its tendencies all 
downward. You say, or think, perhaps, that if your 
being were a purely spiritual essence, you would be free 
from all swayings to evil. But how do you know that? 
Nay, keener than the temptations of sense itself, are the 
spiritual passions — ambition, envy, revenge, and malignant 
hate. You imagine that if your present frame were ex- 
changed for some ethereal body, you would have passed out 
of the sphere of evil and peril. That again, you do not 
know. Come then to the simple fact, and let it stand un- 
prejudiced by any theory, or any fancy, or any comparison. 
God has given to us, in the present stage of our being, this 
body — this wonderful frame. Sinews and ligaments bind it 
together, such as no human skill could ever have devised. 
Telegraphic nerves run all over and through this microcosm, 
this little world, and bear mysterious messages, vital as 
thought and swift as sunbeams. Now I say that these are 
all moral bonds, good ministries, channels meant to inform 
and replenish the soul, and not to clog or corrupt it. 

I hardly need say this, in the first place, of the five dis- 
tinct senses — touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing. They are 
the mind's instruments to communicate with the outward 
world ; instruments so varied as to convey every kind of 
information ; servants that need not to be sent to and fro 
on errands, but that stand as perpetual ministrants — before 
the gates of morning, and amidst the melody of groves, and 
by the bowers of fragrance, and at the feast of nature, and 



86 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

wherever the pressure of breathing life and beauty comes 
to ask admission to the soul. The body is a grand har- 
monicon, a panharmonicon, strung with chords for all the 
music of nature. Serving all needful purposes also — to 
walk, to run, to move from place to place ; to work, to 
achieve more than all animal organisms together can do ; it 
is, at the same time, an org anon scientiarum, an organ of 
all knowledge. It is more than a walking library, it is a 
walking perception — of things that no library can teach ; it 
is a walking vision — of things that no language can de- 
scribe : like the wheels that appeared to the rapt Ezekiel, 
full of eyes within and without. 

All this, then, it will not be denied, is good and useful 
ministration to the mind. One might as well inveigh 
against a telescope or an ear trumpet as against the eye 
or ear. 

But now to this system belong certain distinct suscepti- 
bilities ; which are not classed under the head of senses : 
these are called appetites. Such, for instance, is hunger ; or, 
in other words, the general relish for food and drink, which, 
when denied for a certain time, becomes hunger or thirst. 
I have before alluded to the uses of this particular appetite, 
but I wish to say a word further and more distinctly of it 
in this connection. 

You can easily conceive that a being might have been 
made without this appetite — -made to move, to act, to live ; 
but not to eat. Or you can conceive that he might have 
had the relish for agreeable food and drink, without the in- 
tolerable pain he feels when they are long denied. Why, 
then, this pain ? I look upon it as a distinct provision, de- 
signedly, and, if I may say so, gratuitously put into the sys- 
tem, to arouse man from indolence, to arouse him to activ- 
ity. I look upon it just as if nature had provided a whip ; 
just as if there were an organ attached to the human body 
as the arm is, and fashioned like a scourge, and, when the 
man is sinking to ruinous indolence, lifting itself up and 
striking him with a blow, to stir him to action. It is a sting, 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 87 

and answers that purpose. And moreover, it is a stimulus 
exactly adjusted to the strength of the agent, and also to 
the means of gratification. If hunger returned every hour, 
instead of two or three times a day, human sinews could not 
bear it, nor provide for it, nor the world-supply of food suf- 
fice it. 

And is it a point too low for philosophy to observe, fur- 
thermore, that hunger, with the peculiar needs of that ap- 
petite in man, promotes social intercourse ? I say, with the 
peculiar needs of that appetite in man ; for Ms food must 
be cooked. He cannot pursue his prey or pull up his root, 
like the wild animal, and eat it on the spot, alone. He 
must bring it home, he must have arrangements for cook- 
ery ; and the convenience of this process makes it almost 
necessary that families should assemble at certain times of 
the day and eat together. I am persuaded that we little 
suspect the immense social and civilizing effect of these daily 
gatherings around the social board. 

But admitting that the appetites have their uses — which 
is the first position I take — it is said, nevertheless, that they 
have bad tendencies, tendencies to excess, to vice, to ruin. 
On this point, there is, in the second place, a most impor- 
tant distinction to be made ; and that is, between appetite 
in its simple, natural state, and appetite in its artificial and 
unnatural state ; a state brought on by voluntary habit and 
corrupting imagination and mental destitution ; for which 
man's will is responsible, and not his constitution. Look 
then at simple, unsophisticated, unperverted appetite. Is 
the draught of intemperance, or the surfeit of gluttony, nat- 
urally agreeable? Far otherwise. Moreover, all those 
stimulant and narcotic substances and those rich condi- 
ments, of which excess makes its principal use, are naturally 
distasteful and disgusting in the highest degree. I do not 
say that even they were created in vain, or must necessarily 
be injurious ; for everything is good in its' place and degree — 
even poison is so ; but I say that there is no natural demand 
for these strong stimulants. On the contrary, fever in the 



88 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

veins, poison in the blood, sickness, nausea, are remonstran- 
ces of simple appetite, remonstrances of nature against them. 
And show me what diseased and vicious passion you will, 
and I will show you that it is the mind's guilt, and not the 
body's defect ; that it is not the passion let alone, still less 
duly controlled by the higher nature. It is not nature, 
but bad example or companionship, that leads to evil. It 
is imagination that nurses passion into criminal desire. 
There is a natural modesty which unhallowed license always 
has to overcome. Let no man lay that flattering unction to 
his soul, that God has made him to love evil — made vice 
and baseness to be naturally agreeable to him ; for it is not 
true ! 

But these appetites, besides their general uses, and be- 
sides their natural innocence, seem to me, in the third place, 
to bear a specific relation to the mind. They are urgent 
teachers. 

They teach, first, moderation. They teach the necessity 
of self-restraint, of self-denial. I have no doubt that a being 
not clothed with flesh, a pure spiritual essence, would feel 
the necessity of self-restraint. But if any physical organi- 
sation, belonging to an intellectual nature, could be made 
to enforce this law, it appears to me it would be that of our 
human senses and appetites. Because it is manifest that 
their unrestrained indulgence works the direst ruin to the 
whole nature. What ! does this our sensitive frame teach 
lessons of evil, lessons of vice ? God and nature forbid ! 
Open, patent, everlasting fact teaches the very contrary. 
The woes of intemperance, gluttony, licentiousness, excess, 
are the very horrors and calamities of the world in- every 
age. They are so horrible that we dare not describe them. 
Here, then, is "elder Scripture writ by God's own hand" 
written before ever voice was heard on Sinai or by the shores 
of Galilee, written all over the human frame, and within 
every folded leaf of that wonderful system. Yes, upon the 
ghastly form it is written, and upon the burning cheek, and 
deep in the branching arteries, and along the secret and in- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 89 

visible nerves is it written. And sometimes you may read 
the writing by the literal, alcoholic fires, kindled in the 
veins ; which, with visible flame, burn up the man ; and 
sometimes by such haggard lines of deformity as nothing 
but the worst license of vice ever drew upon the human 
frame. I once saw in Paris a collection of wax figures 
taken from life, and designed to present such an illustration. 
I do not wish to speak of it, nor of the vice illustrated, nor 
of the nightmare horror felt by the beholder for hours after 
it. is seen. But it seemed to me that no preaching on earth, 
was ever like that silent gallery. 

You must have patience with me, my friends, for I must 
overthrow entirely, and utterly demolish this plea of the 
senses for vice. My argument for the ministry of the senses 
and appetites, cannot stand at all, unless I do that. The 
truth is, the senses, fittest for virtue, happiest in innocence, 
are only capable of vice — that is all, but no conceivable 
organization could be surrounded with more tremendous 
remonstrances against evil. So the mind is capable of evil, 
and so is the mind, too, guarded. And it might as well be 
said that the mind seduces to ill, as that the body does — nay, 
I think, better — with far more reason. But because sensual 
aberration is more apparent, and the effects are more visible, 
therefore the world, with little insight as yet into the truth 
of things, has agreed to charge this fact of temptation espe- 
cially upon the body. It would be coming nearer to the 
truth to say, that the mind is the real culprit. 

What are the comparatively poor, puny, and innocent 
senses, but servants of the mind — compelled to do its bid- 
ding ? I know it is a doctrine of old time, that the body 
does all the mischief ; that the body is the enemy of the 
mind, a clog, an encumbrance, a corrupter. The philoso- 
pher, Plotinus, affected to have forgotten his birthplace and 
parentage, because, says Porphyry, " he was ashamed that 
his soul was in a body." He imagined that the mind had 
good cause to complain of the body. But I believe it would 
not be difficult, and scarcely fanciful, to set forth a counter 



90 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

plea. "I Lave wandered'' — might the substance of the 
body say to the mind — " I have wandered through all the 
regions of existence, and never was abused, till I came in 
contact with you. I have made a part of animal natures, 
that were innocent ; I have lived in the beautiful forms of 
vegetable life ; I have flowed in the streams and sported in 
the air, all purity and freshness and freedom ; and never 
till I was subjected to your influence, was I breathed upon 
by any bad spirit ; never till then, was I tainted by the dis- 
eases of vice, or made a loathsome mass of sin-wrought cor- 
ruption ; never til] then, was my nature perverted from its 
uses, and made the instrument of evil." 

But to speak most seriously : What a wonderful, moral 
structure is our physical frame ! If a command to be pure 
were written, imprinted in visible letters, upon every limb 
and muscle, it could not be a clearer mandate, and by no 
means so powerful. It was said to the mad and rebellious 
Saul, " It is hard for thee to kick against the thorns." Such 
a message comes indeed from no open vision, but from his 
inmost frame, to every raging voluptuary. Thorns and tor- 
tures does it shoot out against him from every part. If, 
every time he indulged in any excess, he were covered with 
nettles and stings, the intimation would not be a whit more 
monitory than it is now. 

How different is it with the animal ! You may feed 
him to repletion ; you may fatten him into a monster ; and 
there is no disease, no suffering ; there is only enjoyment ; 
and so far as he is destined for food, he is the more fitted 
for his purpose. But if you do this to man, disease and 
pain enter in at every pore. 

The ancient philosophers, in their theories, desecrated 
matter ; the moderns, and especially the sensual school in 
France, have deified it. They boldly proclaimed — I speak 
of the French infidel philosophers of the latter part of the 
eighteenth century — they boldly proclaimed matter to be the 
true divinity ; the human frame, its altar ; and the appe- 
tites, its priesthood. Selfishness with them was the only 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 91 

motive ; sensation, the only good ; and life a bowing down 
in worship to the appropriate divinity. But whoever tries 
that theory, will find that matter is indeed a god, too pow- 
erful for him ; the fleshly altar will be burned up and de- 
stroyed by the strange fire that is laid upon it ; and the 
priests, the appetites, will perish in that profane ministra- 
tion. 

The Government builds prisons for culprits, and protects 
the honest house. All men pronounce that to be a moral 
administration. But what if, when wrong was perpetrated 
in the honest house, and it had become the habitation of the 
base and vile, it should, by some wonder-working interven- 
tion of the Government, grow dark and desolate, and should 
gradually turn into a prison — the windows narrowing year 
by year, and grated bars growing over them ; the rooms, 
the ceilings, slowly darkening ; the aspects of cheerful and 
comfortable abode gradually disappearing, and gloom and 
filth coming instead, and silence, broken only by the sobs 
and moans of prisoners, or the sadder sound of cursing or 
revelling ? Such, mark it well ! becomes the body, the more 
immediate house of life, to every abandoned transgressor ! 
Hot alone the mount that burned with fire, utters the com- 
mandment of God ; not alone the tabernacle of Moses, 
covered with cloud and shaken with thunder; but this 
cloud-tabernacle of life, which God has erected for the spirit's 
dwelling, and the electric nerves that dart sensation like 
lightning through it — all its wonders, all its mysteries, all 
its veiled secrets, all its familiar recesses, are full of urgent 
and momentous teaching. 

But there is something further to be observed concern- 
ing this teaching ; there is one respect in which it is yet 
more urgent. For it demands not only moderation and 
self-denial, but activity : it forbids not only excess, but indo- 
lence. It demands of those who do not labor, daily, out-of- 
door exercise — not a lounge in a carriage only, but a walk, 
or some bracing exercise in the open air — demands that, or 
says, "pay for your neglect." Some inuring, some hard- 



92 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

ness — hardship, if they please to call it — nature exacts even 
of the gentlest of its children. The world was not built to 
be a hothouse, but a gymnasium rather. Yoluptuous re- 
pose, luxurious protection, enervating food and modes of 
life, are not the good condition, not the permitted resort, for 
our physical nature. Half of the physician's task with 
many, is to fight off the effects of such abuses. The laws 
of the human constitution are moral laws ; they address the 
conscience, the moral nature ; they exact penalties for neg- 
lect. And doubtless the penalties are severe. That is not 
nature's fault, but nature's excellence. Doubtless the pen- 
alties are severe. I am persuaded, indeed, that if they could 
be enumerated ; if all the languid and heavy pulses could 
be numbered ; if all the miseries of nervous and diseased 
sensation could be defined ; if all that could be described 
which surrounds us with wasted forms, or sequesters them 
in silent chambers, an aggregate of ills could be found 
which would match the statistics of pauperism, or of intem- 
perance itself. I believe there is less suffering among the 
idler and more luxurious classes, from violent disorders, 
than from those chronic and nervous ailments, which do not 
always inflict acute pain, which do not alarm us for the 
patient — well if they did ! — but which enfeeble the energies, 
destroy the elasticity of the frame, undermine the very con- 
stitution of the body ; which depress the spirits too, wear 
out the patience, sour the temper, cloud the vision of 
nature, disrobe society of its beauty and despoil it of its 
gladness, and send their victim to the grave at last, from a 
life which has been one long sigh. And all might have 
been prevented by one brisk daily walk in the open air. 

This subject — and I mean now this whole subject of the 
right training and care of the body — is one, I conceive, of 
unappreciated importance. Our physical nature is more 
than the theatre, more than the stage, it is the very costume, 
the very drapery in which the mind acts its part ; and if it 
hangs loosely or awkwardly upon the actor, if it weighs him 
down as a burden, or entangles his step at every turn, the 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 93 

action, the great action of life must be lame and deficient. 
What that burden, that entanglement is now } and what is 
the genuine vigor and health of a man ; what is the true, 
spiritual ministry of the body to the soul, I am persuaded, 
we do not yet know. 

I confess that I sometimes think that this subject — what 
old Lewis Cornaro denominated in his book " the advantage — 
not the duty only — but the advantage of a temperate life," 
is one that goes behind all the preaching. The physical 
system, though not the temple, is the very scaffolding with- 
out which the temple cannot be built. We call from the 
pulpit for lofty resolution, cheering courage, spiritual aspi- 
ration, divine serenity. Alas ! how shall a body clogged 
with excess, or searched through every pore with nervous 
debility ; how shall a body, at once irritable, pained, and 
paralyzed, yield these virtues in their full strength and per- 
fection % We ask that the soul be guarded, nurtured, 
trained to vigor and beauty, in its mortal tenement ; 
that the flame in that shrine, the body, be kept bright 
and steady. Alas ! the . shrine is shattered ; and rains 
and windflaws beat in at every rent ; and all that the 
guardian — conscience — can do oftentimes, is to hold up a 
temporary screen, first on one side, and then on another ; 
and often the flickering light of virtue goes out, and all in 
that shrine is dark and cold and solitary ; it has become a 
tomb ! 

I am endeavoring, in this part of my lecture, to defend 
man's physical constitution in general from the charge that 
it naturally develops evil, vice, intemperance, excess every 
way. I before showed that the specific organs and attri- 
butes of the physical structure — the sense of touch, speech, 
laughter, the human face and hand — are fine ministries to 
the intellectual nature. I came then to what is thought the 
more questionable tendency of the senses and appetites ; 
and I have shown, first, that they are useful — as hunger, for 
instance, impelling to industry ; secondly, that they are 
naturally innocent, i. e. that they do not like, but naturally 



94: ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

dislike excess ; and thirdly, that they powerfully teach and 
enforce wholesome moderation and healthful activity. 

I deny, therefore, that the bodily constitution naturally 
ministers to evil, to vice. A similar organization shows no 
such tendency in animals. It is the mind, then, that is in 
fault. But now I wish further to show, before 1 leave the 
subject, that vicious excess is a complete inversion of the 
natural relations of the mind and body ; that instead of 
being according to nature, it turns everything upside down 
in our nature. 

Certainly, in the natural order of our powers, the mind 
was made to be master ; the body was made to be servant. 
Naturally the body does not say to the mind, " Go hither 
and thither ; do this and that ; " but the mind says this to 
the body. The mind too has boundless wants that range 
through earth and heaven, through infinitude, through 
eternity ; and it must have boundless resources. Can it 
find them in the body ? — in that for which " two paces of 
the vilest earth " will soon be " room enough." Our physi- 
cal frame is only the medium ; as it were, an apparatus of 
tubes, reflectors, iEolian harp strings, to convey the myste- 
rious life and beauty of the universe to the soul. So far as 
it loses this ministerial character, and becomes in itself an 
end on which the mi ad fastens, on whose enjoyments the 
mind gloats, all is wrong, and is fast running to mischief, 
misery, and ruin. 

For suppose this dreadful inversion to be effected ; sup- 
pose that the all-grasping mind resorts to the body alone 
for satisfaction — forsakes the wide ranges of knowledge, of 
science, of religious contemplation, the realm of earth and 
stars, and resorts to the body alone, and has, alas ! for it, 
no other resource. What will the mind do then f It will — 
I had almost said, it must, with its boundless craving, push 
every appetite to excess. It must levy unlawful contribu- 
tions upon the whole physical nature. It must distrain 
every physical power to the utmost. Ah ! it has so small 
a space from which to draw its supplies, its pleasures, its 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 95 

joys. It must exact of every sense, not what it may inno- 
cently and easily give, but all that it can give. What ere 
long will be the result of this devotion to the body and to 
bodily pleasures ? There eomes a fearful revolution in the 
man ! The sensual passions obtain unlawful ascendency — 
become masters — become tyrants ; and no tyranny in the 
world was ever so horrible. None had ever such agents as 
those nerves and senses — seductive senses, call you them ! — 
say rather those ministers of retribution, those mutes in the 
awful court of nature, that stand ready, silent and remorse- 
less, to do their work. The soul which has used, abused, 
and desecrated the sensitive powers, now finds in them its 
keepers. Imprisoned, chained down, famishing in its own 
abode, it knocks at the door of every sense ; no longer, alas ! 
for pleasure, but for relief. It sends out its impatient 
thoughts, those quick and eager messengers, in every direc- 
tion for supply. It makes a pander of the imagination, a 
purveyor for indiscriminate sensuality of the ingenious 
fancy, a prey of its very affections ; for it will sacrifice 
everything to be satisfied. 

Could it succeed — could it, like the martyr, win the 
victory through these fiery agonies — but no ; God in our 
nature forbids. Sin never wins. Euin falls upon soul and 
body together. For now, at length, the worn-out and abused 
senses begin to give way : they can no longer do the work 
that is exacted of them. The eye grows dim ; the touch is 
palsied ; the limbs tremble ; the pillars of that once fair 
dwelling are shattered, and shaken to their foundation ; the 
whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint ; the elements 
without become enemies to that poor, sick frame ; the fires 
of passion are burning within ; and the mind, like the lord 
of a beleaguered castle, sinks amidst the ruins of its mortal 
tenement, in silent and sullen despair, or with muttered 
oaths and curses and blasphemies. 

Oh, let the mind but have had its own great satisfactions, 
its high thoughts and blessed affections, and then it could say 
to these poor proffers of sense, " I want you not ; I am happy 



96 ON THE PKOBLEH OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

already ; I want you not ; I want no tumult nor revel ; I 
want no cup of excess ; I want no secret nor stolen indul- 
gence ; and as for pleasure — I would as soon sell my body 
to the lire for pleasure, as I would sell my soul to you for 
pleasure" 

Such is the true and natural relation of the mind and 
body ; such is the law of their common culture. Under 
this law the body would be fashioned into a palace of de- 
lights, hardly yet dreamed of. We want a higher ideal of 
what the body was made and meant to be to the soul. 
Sensualism has taught to the world its terrible lessons. Is 
not a higher aesthetic law coming, to teach in a better man- 
ner? Sensualism is but the lowest and poorest form of 
sensitive enjoyment. One said to me, many years ago, "I 
have been obliged, from delicacy of health, to abstain from 
the grosser pleasures of sense ; neither feast nor wine have 
been for me : perhaps I have learned the more to enjoy the 
beauty of nature — the pleasures of vision and the melodies 
of sound." The distinction here taken, shows that the very 
senses might teach us better than they do. For I say, was 
that witness a loser, or a gainer ? Yision and melody ; shall 
grosser touch and taste carry off the palm from them f Yis- 
ion, that makes me possessor of the earth and stars ! — the 
eye, in whose mysterious depths is pictured the beauty of the 
whole creation ! — and what comprehensive wonders in that 
bright orb of vision ! Think of grosser touch and taste ; and 
think, for one moment, what sight and hearing are. It is 
proved by experiments, that, naturally and by mere visual 
impression, the eye sees all things as equidistant and near 
— close to us — a pictured w r all. By comparisons of appar- 
ent size and hue, we have learned to refer all objects to their 
real distance. Sky and clouds, mountain-sides and peaks 
and rocks, river, plain and grove, every tree and swell of 
ground, all are fixed in their place in an instant of time. 
Hundreds of comparisons — hundreds of acts of mind, are 
flung into that regal glance of the eye ! But more than the 
telescopic eye, is the telegraphic ear. More, to my thought, 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 97 

lies in the hidden chambers of viewless sound ; in that more 
spiritual organ, which indeed expresses nothing, but re- 
ceives the largest and finest import of things without ; in 
that mysterious, echoing gallery, through which pass the 
instructive, majestic, and winning tones of human speech ; 
through which floats the glorious tide of song, to fill the 
soul with light and melody. Instruments of godlike skill, 
types and teachers of things divine, harbingers of greater 
revelations to come, are these. Not for temptation, not for 
debasement, was this wondrous frame built up, let ancient 
philosophers or modern voluptuaries say what they will ; 
but to be a vehicle of all nobleness, a seer of all beauty, a 
shrine of worship, a temple of the all-pervading and in- 
dwelling Life. 



LECTURE V. 

OF MAN'S SPIRITUAL CONSTITUTION— MINISTRY OF THE 
MENTAL AND MORAL FACULTIES. 

From the statement of the problem of human destiny, to 
the ground principles of it, as laid in the finite and free nature 
of man ; from the general structure of the material world as 
the place of human abode and culture, to man's physical 
organization, and the ministry of his senses and appetites — 
this has been the order of discourse in our previous lectures. 
Let us now proceed to the mind itself; to that presiding 
power which dwells within the bodily organization, and yet 
is as distinct from it in its nature and essence, as if it were 
ensphered in heavenly splendor ; to that life within, that 
cannot be wanting to the purpose which all life around it 
subserves. 

On any theory of human nature, this field, of inquiry is 
fairly open to us. For though the theory about the soul be 
this — that it is by nature spiritually dead, and can wake to 
life only by a regenerating power ; though the soul were 
regarded as a dry and dead mechanism, helpless and inca- 
pable of moving itself, yet when the stream of influence is 
jpouredwpcm. it, that stream, it will not be denied, finds and 
sets in motion a machinery fitted to answer high purposes. 
It is into this grand mechanism that we are now to look. 

In its nature, I say, it stands completely apart from the 
physical mechanism. Thought, feeling, conscience, is one 
thing ; bone, sinew, brain, is another thing. Because they 
are intimately associated, because thought, feeling, con- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 99 

science operate through bone, sinew, and brain, therefore to 
say, as the materialist does, that they are of the same nature, 
is as if he should say, that because light, to be perceived, 
passes through the eye, therefore light and the eye are of 
the same nature ; or because life dwells in the plant, there- 
fore the material structure of the plant, is the same thing as 
the mysterious life that animates it. Or if lie says that thought 
is the result of a bodily organization, he says that which can 
be no matter of perception or knowledge to him — which is 
nothing, in fact, but the merest imagination. He may 
imagine, if he pleases, and he might as well, that thought is 
an exhalation from the earth, that it comes up through the 
soles of the feet, that it passes, like raw material, through 
the mechanism of the human system, till it issues from the 
brain the finished product. To all such dreaming, we 
may say — if mind is not one thing, and matter is not 
another thing ; if mechanic organization is not one thing, 
and the conscious and living will is not another ; if these 
substances or modes of being do not, in fact, lie at the 
opposite poles of thought ; then there is no such thing as 
difference in the universe. 

And let me say also, that the mind, the inner being, is 
not, as an object of thought, enveloped in that peculiar ob- 
scurity commonly ascribed to it. Metaphysics may be ab- 
struse, and far away from the ordinary paths of thought, 
but the mind is not. It is imagined to be far more mys- 
terious and inaccessible than matter. But, strictly speaking, 
in the nature of things, the very contrary is the truth. 
Things without me, are matters of observation ; things 
within, of consciousness. The things within are nearer and 
more certain to me. I know myself, as I know nothing else. 
I know my thought better than I know any object without 
me. When I compare thought with thought, and draw a 
conclusion, that process is far more intelligible to me, than 
when I put heat to fuel, and produce combustion. The 
outward world is phenomenal and shadowy, compared with 
the inward. Some philosophers have doubted whether it 



100 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

exists at all ; but none have doubted their own existence. 
I can easily believe, that if we could get back to our origi- 
nal experience, we should find that, at first, , the bodily 
organs themselves seemed as external and foreign to us, as 
the material world — the foot no more a part of ourself than 
the ground it trod upon ; but no such mistake could be 
made with regard to our thought, our feeling, our conscious- 
ness : that is ourself. 

Into this innermost home of our humanity, then, let us 
enter ; and see what is created there, to minister to the 
great end of our being. 

In the mind then, considered as distinct from bodily 
sensation, there are three great faculties, or classes of facul- 
ties. 

First, there are the intellectual powers. And what is 
their ministry ? Plainly to discover truth. This is the one 
object, the destined result of their entire action. There is 
the intuition of truth, which embraces mathematical axioms 
and the original moral conceptions ; which embraces ideas 
of truth as superior to error, of right as higher than wrong, 
of cause and effect, of time and space, both finite and infi- 
nite ; ideas native to the mind, created, embedded in it ; 
ideas which are the foundation of all reasoning. Then there 
is perception of facts around us, and consciousness of facts 
within us ; and judgment, which compares these facts and 
draws conclusions ; and imagination, which ranges through 
the creation, and gathers new and analogous facts and prin- 
ciples ; and memory, the storehouse of knowledge — without 
which there could be no comparison, no process of thought. 
All these faculties obviously have one design, the discovery 
of truth. 

Secondly, there are the sesthetic faculties, whose office is 
the perception of beauty. Certain forms, proportions, colors, 
and sounds are naturally agreeable to us ; others are dis- 
agreeable. I am not aiming at any full or detailed analysis 
of the mind. I only wish, in the general, to direct your 
attention to its cardinal principles. And certainly there is 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 1Q1 

such a part of our mental constitution as I now indicate ; 
which has no direct regard either to truth or right, though 
it is in many ways connected with both. There is nothing 
strictly intellectual nor moral in the agreeableness of certain 
forms and colors, in the sense of proportion and harmony 
and melody. These belong to the aesthetic part of our 
nature. 

Thirdly, there is the moral faculty — that is, conscience — 
and its nature and office cannot be mistaken. What it is, 
there can be no doubt ; though the questions, how it arises 
in the mind, and how it acts, have admitted of various 
explanations. They are very familiar — those of Hartley, 
Adam Smith, Paley, and of the later and better philoso- 
phers, German, French, and English, who hold that con- 
science is a distinct and original faculty. But it is unneces- 
sary to consider them in detail ; because they all admit that 
there is such a thing as conscience ; that it is a discrimina- 
tion of the right from the wrong ; that it is an approval of 
the right, and a condemnation of the wrong. Neither does 
a misguided conscience, of which the world has seen enough, 
and of which flippant sceptics have made so much, any 
more prove that there is no such thing as conscience, than 
a misguided reason proves that there is no such thing as 
reason. Beneath the rubbish of all human errors lies the 
indestructible basis. Nay more ; within, wrapped up within 
every moral mistake that ever was committed, lies the nu- 
<?Ze«s-conviction that something is right. Conscience, how- 
ever imperfect, unenlightened, erring, has ever held that 
there was something right in the very wrong which it sanc- 
tioned. It has sanctioned cruelty, oppression, war. Why ? 
Because it believed them to be right. The very persecutor, 
like Paul, thought he was doing God service. That inborn 
element was never worked out of the moral judgments of 
men. That great and solemn word, right, was never erased 
from the tablet of humanity, howsoever worn and defaced, 
and never will be. 

Let us now consider how this spiritual constitution of 



102 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

our humanity, intellectual, aesthetic, and moral, conduces to 
the end for which we say that it was made ; how, indeed, it 
is a kingdom built up within us, with laws and ordinances 
and powers all conspiring to that end. In doing this, we 
must take care to distinguish, in human nature, the perma- 
nent from the casual, the necessary from the contingent, the 
fundamental from the superincumbent, God's work in the 
mind from man's overlaying. In works of human art, if 
the critic or student should neglect to make this distinction, 
if he should confound fragments and defacements and ruins 
with the original structure and design of statue or temple, 
he would stumble at the first step. And the original, the 
Divine work in the soul, is to be distinguished from all that 
mars it, or there will be no proper ground for any study of 
it. Ground there is, however ; and this consideration of the 
matter — the distinction, that is, which I here make — is most 
pertinent and practical to the present state of men's minds. 
For the aberrations of our humanity, by many, are mistaken 
for its laws and principles. Because men have fallen into 
deep and sad erring, they seem to suppose that nothing bet- 
ter than erring is to be expected of them. Depravity as a 
doctrine, is made an apology for depravity as a life. And 
man, " made but a little lower than the angels," made for 
angelic aspiration, suffers himself to be low and vile almost 
without shame, certainly without any keen and converting 
self-reproach. 

The error is as old as the most ancient philosophy, and 
as new as almost the latest. The Persian sages, the Greek 
philosophers, Plato himself, the Gnostics generally, and 
even some of the Christian fathers, held that the world and 
its inhabitants were so ill made that they would not ascribe 
the work to the Supreme God, but charged it upon some 
inferior being — Demiurge or Satan. Even the learned Cud- 
worth, so late as two centuries ago, maintained, and his 
opinion is countenanced by the acute and liberal-minded 
Le Clerc, that all things here below are arranged and or- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 103 

dered by a certain power, which he calls " Plastic Nature," 
a power, he says, " incorporeal, but low and imperfect." 

Assuredly we have learned better things than these, and 
can vindicate a better philosophy. Humanity ill made ? 
Indeed the best argument for that theory would be the 
blindness that could see no better. Ill made ? It is made, 
first of all, to recognize the sovereignty of truth. Errors 
and deviations and controversies there have been, and 
enough of them, in the world ; but the one challenge of all 
dispute, from the first hour that ever a man debated any- 
thing with his neighbor, has been this — " I have the truth ; 
and you have it not." All intellectual erring, at least in 
the regions of abstract inquiry, has been involuntary, and 
has evermore been a seeking for the truth. If it had 
found nothing, then, indeed, would a case be made out 
against us, of stupendous abortion. But what do the words 
— science, philosophy, literature, art, poetry, common sense 
— mean, if the search has been in vain ? And if there stood 
upon the earth, now and here before us, one who had dis- 
covered all the truths, the secret and mysterious truths of 
nature and life and humanity, that being would draw from 
the whole world a homage such as was never paid at the 
throne of monarch or pontiff. So is man made ; so to bow 
down before the truth, before the simple, naked, invisible 
truth, as he bows before no outward shrine. The eternal 
reason speaks in him ; and its word is an oracle. Above 
all earthly power and grandeur, sits sage wisdom. The 
monarchs of the world are such as Flato, Homer, Milton, 
Shakspeare. 

Homage to such is natural. Truth leads not downward, 
but upward. There is something ennobling in the bare pur- 
suit of it, in the most abstract forms. One cannot listen to 
a clear and lofty discoursing, without feeling his very frame 
to expand with swelling thoughts. There are books, and 
even those of the abstrusest philosophy, like Dugald Stew- 
art's, which I cannot hear read without feeling as if I 
wanted to rise up and stride through the room, and were a 



104 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 



"beautiful eulogium which Sir James Mackintosh passes on 
Dugald Stewart. " How many," he says, " are still alive, 
in different countries, and in every rank to which education 
reaches, who, if they accurately examined their own minds 
and lives, would not ascribe much of whatever goodness and 
happiness they possess, to the early impressions of his gentle 
and persuasive eloquence ! " * 

Turn now to the department of Science. It does not fall 
within my present design to speak at length of its vastness — 
of the grand fabric of scientific knowledge which man has 
built up in the world ; to show how he has stretched the 
compass of his investigation from the earth to the skies ; 
how he has analyzed every known substance, and studied 
the laws of invisible agencies, and penetrated into the beds 
and layers of the old creation, and deciphered its history ; 
how he has descried millions of living creatures sporting in 
a globule of water, and then risen to follow the miilioned 
globes of heaven in their courses ; how he has traced out 
astonishing analogies of structure between the flower of the 
field and the system of heavenly spheres — between the ar- 
rangement and development of the solar system, and the 
branchings of our forest trees — showing them all to be of 
one type, one order, one creative idea. But whither can all 
this stupendous knowledge lead, but to God? Where can 
man bow down his awe-struck reason but before the throne 
of the invisible Might ? Science is the natural ally and min- 
ister of religion. And this, notwithstanding the assump- 
tions of some philosophers, whom not science, but irreve- 
rence, has made Atheists, has now come to be regarded as 
the established truth. 

" Still " — I hear it said — " the mass of mankind is buried 
in ignorance." It is curious to observe how constantly we 
use the word ignorance, as if there were no knowledge but 
that of books and theories. The active classes, I think, 

* View of the Progress of Ethical Philosophy in the Seventeenth and Eight- 
eenth Centuries, p. 213. 



ON TEE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 105 

have some right to complain of this book-learned assump- 
tion. What are we to say of that vast accumulation of 
knowledge, called common sense ; the light of daily life ; 
the light of guidance that shines upon all the paths of hu- 
man pursuit ? All the philosophy in the world, could not 
supply the place of that ; all the philosophy in the world, in 
utility, is perhaps inferior to it. It has been reserved for 
some of the French philosophers, Jouffroy, and others, to 
raise this truth to its proper place. M. Jouffroy has raised 
it, perhaps, something above its place ; for this is his view of 
the matter. " Seeing and observing" he says, " are differ- 
ent things. Seeing is universal ; observing is the philoso- 
pher's province. Observing is the seizing and examining 
of particular aspects of things ; and although keener than 
the common and general seeing, and having its own im- 
mense importance, it is apt to be narrow and one-sided. 
Hence the varying and conflicting systems of philosophy. 
But seeing is broader, though less clear ; sight is the mirror 
that holds all things. The common man sees all things, in 
nature and humanity, as truly as the philosopher, and having 
no bias, no theory to support, is likely to see them more 
justly, though far less deeply." Common sense therefore 
corrects the aberrations of philosophy. Thus he says, " The 
history of philosophy presents a singular spectacle ; a cer- 
tain number of problems are reproduced at every epoch ; 
each of these problems suggests a certain number of solu- 
tions, always the same ; philosophers are divided ; discus- 
sion is set on foot ; every opinion is attacked and defended 
with equal appearance of truth. Humanity listens in si- 
lence, adopts the opinion of neither, but preserves its own ; 
which is what is called common sense." * 

But it is more especially to my purpose to say that com- 
mon sense has come to distinctly moral conclusions. These 
are embodied in a mass of maxims, proverbs, apothegms, 
the hived-up wisdom of all ages, which, if I had space to 
repeat them, you would see to possess only less truth and 

* See the Essay translated in Ripley's Specimens, Vol. I. 



106 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

authority than Holy Writ itself. Such are the maxims, 
that " honesty is the best policy ; all is not gold that glit- 
ters ; handsome is, that handsome does ; time and tide wait 
for no man ; forewarned, forearmed ; right wrongs no man ; 
every door may be shut but death's door ; man's extremity 
is God's opportunity ; man proposes, God disposes ; no cross, 
no crown ; better the child weep than the father ; " and a 
multitude of others. Common sense, though leaning much 
to prudence and worldly wisdom, is nevertheless a moral 
censor, and sometimes a profound teacher of the highest 
things. It is always the corrective of fanaticism, the satirist 
of folly, the condemnor of vice, the reprover of injustice, 
the patron of truth, integrity and well-doing. 

In the next place, the aesthetic part of our nature, the 
sense of beauty and melody, though not in philosophical 
strictness of speech either intellectual or moral, is most im- 
mediately associated with our noblest faculties, and minis- 
ters to their growth and perfection. 

I have before spoken of the beauty of nature, and of the 
power of music. I have spoken of the eye and ear. Let us 
now penetrate beyond them — beyond the sphere of sights 
and sounds, beyond those organs of seeing and hearing, to 
the sense, the feeling of beauty and melody, in our aesthetic 
and spiritualized nature. The animal has eye and ear, and 
outward world, but, properly speaking, no feeling of beauty 
or of music. Who ever saw one gazing upon a landscape, 
or upon the silver orb of night unless it were to " hay the 
moon ? " Who ever saw one testify delight in music, save 
as it was associated with his master's presence, or with his 
going forth to hunt or to fight ? These higher things are 
reserved for higher natures. 

Again, this sense of beauty is innate ; as much so as 
reason or conscience. Outward sights and sounds do but 
wake it up — do but nurture aud cultivate the inward power 
— do but answer to it. A fair landscape does not create the 
sense of beauty. That already existed within ; made ready 
by the hand of its Creator, to receive the outward impres- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 107 

sion. The soul demands beauty and harmony, just as it de- 
mands truth and right, to satisfy it. It can no more admire 
deformity and discord, than it can admire falsehood and in- 
justice. It is not education that creates these finer instincts. 
If a human being were brought up amidst ugly forms and 
jarring dissonances, the moment that lovely sights and 
sweet melodies broke upon his eye and ear, he would turn 
to them delighted. 

Nay more, this inner sense is never satisfied. All that 
fills the eye and ear, does but awaken the desire of things 
more beautiful, of sounds more melodious. The realm of 
cultivated taste and imagination is forever widening, and 
forever leading the soul onward and upward. 

I say distinctly, upward; from things seen to things un- 
seen ; from things earthly to things heavenly. It is possible 
indeed, but it is not natural, to behold all the glory and 
goodliness of the creation, without being led to the Infinite 
Glory. It is not natural. It is as if one should look upon 
a lovely countenance, and never think of the loveliness 
which it enshrines. 

"No, the grandeur and loveliness of nature — sunsets and 
stars, and the almost literally uplifting deeps of the blue 
sky, as we gaze upon them — and earth with its beauty, soft, 
wild, entrancing — with its glorious verdure, its autumn 
splendor, its sprinkled wilderness of charming hues and 
forms ; and ocean, bathing its summer shores, and bearing 
like many-colored gems upon its bosom the green and 
flowery islands — these things are not only beautiful, but 
they are images and revelations of a glory and a goodliness, 
unseen and ineffable. They steep the soul in reveries and 
dreams of enchantment, unearthly and immortal. How has 
the radiant vision kindled the poet's eye and lighted the 
torch of genius, and come down as fire from heaven upon 
the altars of piety, in all ages ! A bed or a bouquet of flowers 
— who can read anything upon their soft and shining petals 
and delicate hues, but sweetness, purity, and goodness ; and 
how many silent thanksgivings from those who bend over 



108 ON THE PROBLEM OP HUMAN DESTINY. 

them, have ascended to Heaven, on the breath of their fra- 
grant incense ! And music — what chord in all its wondrous 
harmonies ever touched any evil passion % I have heard of 
voluptuous music; but I never heard it, and cannot con- 
ceive of it. Words may be voluptuous, or wrathful, or re- 
vengeful ; but not melodies. Hotbeds of musical culture 
there may be, that corrupt the heart ; but it is not music 
that does it. I should as soon think of a sunbeam's soiling 
the atmosphere it passes through. ~No, there is no possible 
concord of sweet sounds, there is no combination of tones 
within the range of harmony, but it weaves garments of 
light and purity for the soul. All melody naturally bears 
the thoughts into realms of holy imagining, sentiment, and 
worship. I would cultivate music in a family, with the 
same intent as I would build an altar. Away with the un- 
worthy notion of it, as a mere fashionable accomplishment ! 
It is a high ministration. And the highest musical culture, 
so far from being time and means thrown away, is really as 
a priesthood in the household. 

In the third place to be considered, with reference to our 
argument, is the moral part of our nature — conscience. 
And there are three elements in conscience, to which I wish 
to draw your attention ; its directive, its authoritative, and 
its executive power. 

We are saying in this lecture, that the whole interior 
constitution of man was made to guide him to truth, to vir- 
tue, to the supreme good and Goodness. The most power- 
ful aid to this end is, doubtless, the conscience. 

It is directive. Do you say that you know men with 
very queer consciences ; and that nations and ages differ 
about what is right ; and so infer that there is no direction ? 
A moment's reflection must convince you that these differ- 
ences do not touch the principle of conscience, but only the 
applications of the principle. To plead these differences in 
denial of the principle, would be as if one said that because 
there are errors, there is no such thing as truth ; because 
there is a great deal of darkness, there is no such thing as 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 109 

light ; or because there are variations of the needle, there 
are no magnetic poles. Nay, but how knew you of vari- 
ations, if there were no direction ? How knew you of dark- 
ness, if there be no light ? And what is error, but distorted 
truth ? And so the very aberrations of conscience, prove 
that there is a conscience. 

Nay, but it is directive. It approves of justice, truth, 
integrity — gratitude, generosity, disinterestedness — gentle- 
ness, pity, kindliness. It says, " This is the way ; " nobody 
can doubt it. And now suppose that across the field of 
life there fell from heaven, before every man's eye, a bright 
track of light, such as you have seen the moon cast athwart 
the troubled waters ; or suppose that on your hand were a 
compass and a needle, pointing ever to the right way ; what 
guidance, you would say, is here ! 

But more than sunbeam or needle points the way. An 
awful sceptre is stretched over us. Conscience is more than 
guidance ; it is authority. When a man says, " I ought " — 
may I beg of you to pause a moment upon that expression, 
and to consider what it means ? When a man says, " I 
ought," he has an indescribable sense of allegiance — to 
something. He knows not what — it may be ; no visible 
power commands him : he does not think what it is ; but 
that word, " ought" binds him — to an unseen Lawgiver. I 
know, gentlemen, that the lecture room is not the place for 
preaching or for rhetoric ; but I do feel that here is a fact 
of awful significance — too little considered. This silent 
reign of right in our humanity — this magnet in the soul, 
ever drawn by an invisible influence, to the right — what is 
it ? What does it mean 1 What does it proclaim ? I an- 
swer — there must be a God ! — for God only could have im- 
pressed that mysterious law upon our humanity. Ah ! poor, 
human trembler beneath that awful mandate ! — great wit- 
ness, shall I not rather say, to that sublime authority ! — does 
he think to escape from it ? Go to the deepest and darkest 
cavern of the earth ; go where thou art alone and no eye 
sees thee — where no power of the Church shall coerce, on 



110 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

enactment of law bind, no hand of government compel — 
where there shall be nothing save thine unutterable con- 
sciousness with thee ; but when thou sayest, " I ought " — 
altar and throne sink to the dust ; they are but symbols of 
that eternal authority that speaks within you — an authority 
that hinds altar and throne, and empire, and the world 
together. 

Does any man think to evade it % Nay, by Heaven and 
the eternal law ! that shall he not. Conscience is executive 
too. No infirm aid does it offer to the right ; no inefficient 
hindrance to the wrong. It announces no idle requisition. 
It has rewards for the good, sweet as the most precious hap- 
piness ; and penalties for the bad, dire as the most dreadful 
misery. No human government was ever so urgent and 
imperative as this power of conscience. It goes down to the 
depths of the heart ; it touches the secretest nerve ; it pen- 
etrates where no human tribunal can go. The human law 
may be evaded ; but let a man carry down into his heart 
the thought that he has done wrong ; and that thought is 
misery — is misery amidst all the blandishments of pleasure 
and the splendors of fortune. And let a man bear, in a 
bosom lacerated with every wound, the blessed conscious- 
ness that he has done right — has done right / and no floods 
of disaster nor fires of martyrdom can deprive him of the 
sweetness of that conviction. 

No man, I repeat, shall evade this law. Retribution is 
more than a doctrine, it is a fact. No violation of conscience 
is so hidden or so slight, but it pays the penalty. There is 
one great error on this subject, old as the world, and new as 
the delusion of to-day, but it is an error still — and that is, 
that concealment is escape, that punishment comes only 
with disclosure or catastrophe. But suppose the conceal- 
ment to be effected — the theft, the fraud, the lie, the bad 
base deed to escape detection — does the man escape? The 
man ! "Why, he knows it. If all the world knew it, and 
he knew it not, then, in a sense, might he be said to escape ; 
he would escape from his own reproach. But even then he 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. m 

would not escape the worst — the very and essential curse of 
evil in himself. " Maxima peccati poena, est peccasse" says 
Seneca ; " the greatest penalty of sin, is to have sinned ! " 
Are men punished only by and by, or when they grow old ? 
Nay, says Plutarch, " they are not punished when they 
grow old, but they are grown old in punishments. Can we 
say," he continues, " that a man is not punished when he is in 
prison, or hath his fetters upon him, till his execution comes ? 
We may as well say that a fish, which hath swallowed the 
hook, is not taken, because it is not fried or cut in pieces ? 
So it is with every wicked man ; he hath swallowed the 
hook, when he committed the evil action." * Lysimachus, 
Alexander's general, is said to have given away a kingdom 
to the Getse, for a draught to quench his extreme thirst : when 
he had taken his draught, he exclaimed, " What a wretch 
was I, to lose a kingdom for so short a pleasure ! " This 
may be fable ; but how many a man, to quench the thirst 
of some raging passion, gives away the kingdom of all in- 
ward tranquillity and fortune. It has been well said that 
our English salutation — " How are you ? " — touches the heart 
of all welfare. Ay, how are you ? — that is the question. 

Again, the taint that is in a man, however concealed and 
however slight, is breathed out into the very air around 
him, steals through the very pores of his life, infects his con- 
versation. His family, his children, society around him, 
those dearest to him, all suffer for it. If it be selfishness, 
avarice, vanity, though he himself be but half conscious of 
it, it lowers the whole tone of his character, conversation, 
and influence. If it be an act of gross fraud or vice, he can- 
not heartily speak at all for the right, for virtue, for what is 
noblest in the world. What a retribution is that ? — to be 
dumb where good men talk — to flee from the converse of 
virtue ! Concealment only increases the evil. If it were 
known, the whole power of society might be united to crush 
and stamp it out of existence ; but now, like a poison or a 
gangrene, it spreads its secret blight through all the rela- 

*Origines Sacrse, B. III. c. iii. p. 116. 



112 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

tions of family, friendship, and society. All this too reacts 
upon the offender in many ways. And in palpable cases it 
is often a saving reaction. How many have forborne the 
inebriating cup, lest it should ruin their children ! And if 
the parent forbears not, and they are ruined, what can in- 
flict a deeper pang ! And if he is brutalized to that extent 
that he cares not, that, I repeat, is the deepest retribution 
of all. 

The adjustment of this law of retribution to our human- 
ity, the mingled severity, forbearance, and discrimination, 
with which it is exercised, are worthy of further attention. 

It makes, for instance, a significant distinction between 
palpable vice and that more indefinite erring, of which the 
world is full. Palpable vice brings a swifter judgment, be- 
cause it is a more manifest wrong. I do not deny that some 
forbearance is shown even here. Providence waits a little 
with the youthful voluptuary, that he may see the evil and 
reform. It does not take many experiments with vice how- 
ever — with the inebriating cup, for instance — to show him 
the evil ; and it very soon appears that nothing will do but 
blasting disease and smiting shame. But with ordinary and 
decent selfishness, with the world's covetousness, pride, and 
vanity, the case is different ; it takes more time to solve the 
problem ; and more is given. But by and by, with every 
thoughtful man, the problem is solved — solved, if not sooner, 
amidst the shadows of declining years. Then life begins to 
spread itself around the selfish man, cold and barren and 
cheerless ; over one green spot and another, the waste 
stretches ; there are none truly to love him, who never truly 
loved anybody but himself; there are none to care for him, 
unless it be with a care purchased, or paid to the sense of 
duty ; the man may be rich, but wealth does not make him 
happy ; feasting, wine, faring sumptuously every day, do 
not make him happy ; splendor, equipage, a crowd of at- 
tendants do not make him happy; and the poor, starved 
nature within, which the wealth and garniture of a thousand 
worlds could not suffice, sighs for some better thing. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. Hg 

Or turn to a different scene ; where evil goes to that 
extent, that it seems to be only misery and exasperation ; 
where amidst want and woe, amidst oaths and blows, life 
goes on like a wild and wrathful battle with calamity. If 
there is anything that tills me with horror and despair, be- 
yond all things else, it is some vile and abandoned city 
quarter, where wild nproar and mad revellings go on amidst 
filth and raggedness and wretchedness unspeakable ; with 
fiery draughts poured out at all comers ; with pale and hag- 
gard brows leaning against the posts and gates of the streets ; 
and in the chambers, horrible diseases, untended, shrieking 
in agony. Is this Stygian pool, this midnight of the world, 
this blackness of darkness — is it Hell ? No, misery is mer- 
ciful, even here ; nature is not devilish ; sighings and tears 
mingle with these horrors — ay, and prayers for deliverance ; 
and it may be God will hear ; and man may help. Poor, 
forsaken wretches ! — outcasts from the world — exiles from 
the light of many homes — could they see that God hath 
stricken them in mercy, that a paternal Providence knocks 
at all their gates — could human entreaties mingle with their 
mad blasphemies — they might return and find a Father in 
heaven — though there be none below — perhaps they have 
killed him ! — none on earth to receive them. 

Sad and heart-sinking spectacle ! — but is there no coun- 
terpart to that picture ? Can retribution find its way only 
through broken gateways and " looped and windowed rag- 
gedness ? " Nay, through castle walls and plating gold, as 
well. On pillows of down and beneath planks of cedar, 
there are agonies as bitter as those which men are wont to 
pity so deeply. Yice desolates all where it comes — makes 
the full house empty, and the great house mean. There is 
a certain destitution in evil, even when there is no remorse. 
As cold is but the absence of heat, so a vice, like avarice, 
may be but the absence of virtue ; but it is very cold and 
deathlike. And even where, in other forms, it kindles a fire 
in the veins, it leaves the heart cold and dead. To the soul, 
it is all poor and paltry. Search the records of its most 
8 



114 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

prosperous career, and there is nothing but dust and desola 
tion in the path. Thus the gayest and the most fortunate 
in the evil way, have always become the greatest complain- 
ers. The poor man's complaints and scorns and rages 
against the world, are nothing to those of the broken and 
worn-out man of pleasure. So it has been with them all, 
from the Imperial Tiberius to the Aspasia of modern French 
gayety, Mnon de l'Enclos, who said, that if she could have 
foreseen what her life was to be, she would rather have died 
upon the threshold, than to have lived that gay and guilty 
life. 

Or turn to the Emperor Tiberius. "What bad man could 
be happy, if he could not ? He had an empire, when that 
empire was the world, to use for his ambition — to farm for 
his pleasures. But what was his life ? Eead a letter of his 
to the Eoman Senate. " "What I shall write to you, con- 
script fathers, he says — or what I shall not write, or why I 
shall write at all — may the gods plague me, more than I 
daily feel that they are doing, if I can tell ! " " Than I daily 
feel that they are doing." This spreads the confession over 
a portion of his life. It was a miserable life ; and every 
bad man's life is a miserable one. 

Such, then, as it presents itself to me, is the picture of 
our inward nature. Its original faculties are all instruments 
constructed, pointed, sharpened for the work of aiding vir- 
tue and resisting vice. And thus, in fine, do I state the case, 
and in the form of a comparison. If you were to examine 
a machinery which you knew was designed to produce a 
certain result ; if you saw, in the first place, a general prep- 
aration and tendency of all its parts to that end; if you 
saw, in the next place, certain sharp instruments exactly 
formed and fashioned to cut and shape out the very thing to 
be made, your mind would rest with satisfaction upon it, as 
a well-adjusted piece of work. But what would be your 
astonishment, if, when you saw things going wrong in that 
mechanism, you observed a secret spring suddenly lift it- 
self up, to resist and correct the wrong tendency. Such 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. H5 

admiration and wonder, I believe, justly belong to the con- 
stitution of our humanity. 

But now, on the whole, it may be asked, " "What has 
this humanity done? You say, it was made for culture. 
"Where is it ? You say it was made to produce certain re- 
sults ? "Where are those results ? Bring^your theory to the 
test of facts. This fine nature, intellectual, aesthetic, moral — 
what has it done ? Culture, do you say, is the end of Prov- 
idence! Is it not production rather? Multiplication of 
the species, seems to be the end ; with little care for its 
development and growth. Transplantation to another clime 
may be the ultimate object ; and would seem to be — so 
thick and stunted is the growth of men here." 

There is one singular and emphatic refutation of all such 
reasoning, in the fact that the children of a single pair are 
not fifty, but commonly five or six. This fact shows that 
care is to be taken of them; that culture is the object, and 
not mere multiplication. 

But let us look at this objection, for a few moments, in 
two views. 

In the first place, with regard to the mass of men, the 
least cultivated — Hindoos, Hottentots, what you will — I say 
that the objection overlooks the actual amount and value of 
their cultivation. If all human beings died in the earliest 
infancy, the objection might seem to be valid ; but even 
then I should doubt it : we know not what valuable impres- 
sions even infancy may, in a single year, acquire. But fol- 
low this being through twenty, thirty, fifty, seventy years, 
and how much has he learned ; ay, without school or insti- 
tute ; without book or Bible — on the Ganges or the Niger ! 
He has looked upon nature, seen and classified thousands of 
objects, and understood the uses of many. He has learned 
to labor — to provide for a family ; and by skill in tillage, or 
hunting, or the care of flocks, he has become lord of the sur- 
rounding scene. He has learned to distinguish between 
right and wrong ; and though he has abused, he has culti- 
vated the moral sense. And within his range have come 



116 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

still higher things. Tradition has poured into his ears its 
mystic love. He has lifted his eyes to the heavens, and his 
thoughts above the heavens to the Infinite Being. Is this 
passage from blank infancy to the crowded page of human 
experience ; from the conception of nothing to the conception 
of Infinitude — is this, I say, no progress, no culture ? Meas- 
ure these few mortal years, and mark the steps passed over ; 
then measure the years of eternity ; and whither shall they 
not bear a being who has begun thus ? 

But in the next place, I say, it is unfair to the argument, 
to take the lowest examples of human culture. If there 
were a hundred similar machines submitted to your exam- 
ination, and one of them in its working far surpassed all the 
rest — the rest halting or breaking down through the bun- 
gling of artisans — you would take that one, as the proper 
illustration of the design and wisdom of the original in- 
ventor. Not the ignorant, the low and base, then, but the 
sages, philanthropists, heroes, the noblest men in the world — 
these proclaim the end for which human nature was made, 
and for which its original powers are fitted. 

I will not dwell upon this human nobleness ; I have not 
space left, nor power to do it justice ; but I will for myself 
simply profess what I think of it ; let the cynic or the sat- 
irist, or the desponding skeptic or complainer say what he 
will. I look around upon the universe, and 1 see many 
bright points ; a dome of brightness above ; and stars that 
are set in the brow of night ; and mountain tops that kindle 
their altar fires with the beams of morning. But in all this 
universe, there is nothing, save the majesty of God most 
High, that draws forth my reverence, my enthusiasm, my 
delight, like a noble and good man. Of all things known 
to me, this is the brightest spot. There may be angels ; 
there may be seraphim — supernal natures above the reach 
of my sympathy. I know them nor ; I never saw such an 
one ; I never saw book of his writing, nor action of his per- 
forming, nor life that he lived, nor death that he died ; 
but I have seen men, through struggle and weariness, and 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. H? 

pain and death, soaring to knowledge, to virtue, to heaven ; 
through lonely studies, through the trampled fires of pas- 
sion, through mortal infirmity, through baits and snares of 
evil, thick strown upon all their path and trodden under 
foot, mounting to the heights of the world. They are seated 
on the thrones of the world, compared with which the 
Caesars held the dominion of a day. They are indeed " the 
representative men " of the earth ; the representative men 
of our humanity. 



LEOTUKE YI. 

THE COMPLEX NATURE OF MAN, PERIODS OF LIFE, 
SOCIETY, HOME, BALANCE OF THE PHYSICAL AND 
MENTAL POWERS. 

I have spoken in my last two lectures of the physical 
and spiritual constitution of man. There is a union of both, 
a complex nature of man, which requires to be considered 
with reference to its end. 

Under this head are to be mentioned, in the first place, 
the different periods of life. These steps of life all have 
their place, and give their aid in the process of human 
development. The physical adaptation in these periods of 
life, images and helps a moral adaptation. Look at the sup- 
ple and flexible limbs of a child, at the strengthening bone 
of manhood, and at the relaxing fibre of age. How neces- 
sary are these ; the one to the safe training of life, the next 
to its stable vigor, and the last to that loosening of the hold 
upon life's labors and cares, which is necessary to the quiet- 
ude, the meditativeness, the ripened wisdom that befit the 
closing period of our earthly existence. ' This remark is 
familiar in physiology, but it is equally applicable to the 
moral economy of the human constitution. 

Childhood is the world's great experimenter. It is the 
season, not of the deepest, but of the most rapid learning. 
It wants, therefore, a peculiar susceptibility to feel, a free- 
dom to choose, and a flexibility to change. It must try this 
and try that, and not fix too strong a grasp upon anything. 
It must be full of hope and buoyancy and facility. Lay 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. H9 

the weight of prejudice or custom, or matured vice, upon 
childhood, and it would be crushed entirely. We are 
alarmed when we see in a child a disposition to prevaricate ; 
but we should be shocked beyond measure if that practice 
were clothing itself with the strength of fixed habit. We 
are vexed when we see a boy taking on airs of superiority 
to his mates, on account of the homage paid to his parent's 
wealth or fame; but, thank Heaven! the great enslaving 
law of opinion yet bears lightly on his ignorance and inno- 
cence. But what should we think, if we saw the full-grown 
vices of sensuality or worldly ambition developing them- 
selves in the body or mind of a child % We should give him 
up in despair. 

You will be more sensible of this guardianship thrown 
around the earliest period of life, if you observe the barrier 
that separates childhood from manhood. In youth, and in 
its passage to maturity, there is a very singular crisis; the 
form, the face, the voice, the temperament, the sentiments, 
the passions, pass through a remarkable change. The pre- 
vious time of life seems to have been a dispensation by 
itself; marked by a certain indifference, by a certain mingled 
levity and apathy with regard to the wider interests of life. 
The child has a safeguard in his profound ignorance of much 
that is around him. He lives in the midst of the world ; 
but a friendly veil is thrown around him, that tempers its 
bright and deceitful glare. He lives in an enclosure pro- 
tected from temptations that would be as wild beasts to his 
gentle innocence. His ambition does not wander beyond 
the school and the play ground. The impulses of sense and 
passion yet slumber in his bosom. His loves are school-day 
friendships and family regards. His life is comparative joy- 
ance and repose. But now at length, the time comes when 
the great veil that hides the world begins to rise ; when the 
first battle with the stronger powers that sleep in the human 
breast, is to be fought ; and the previously secure and calm 
house of life becomes, as it were, a forge, an arsenal, a cit- 
adel. There are flashings out of new and unwonted fires ; 



120 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

there is solemn and even sad brooding over the enterprises 
and destinies of existence ; there are trumpet ca'lls in the 
courtyard of the guarded house ; there is the disturbance 
and disorder, the dust and confusion, the thronging thoughts 
and energies, that betoken the entrance upon a new and 
momentous scene. Forces like these would have split and 
shattered in pieces the frail and delicate tenement of child- 
hood ; but now, to virtuous resolution and youth's first strug- 
gling prayer to Heaven, strength is given to meet them. 

The next stage is manhood. Now something is to be 
decided on, and something is to be done. Before, there was 
activity ; now there is to be work. There is to be plan, 
pursuit, profession — some end to be chosen ; and there is to 
be a concentration of energies to gain it. The field is wider. 
Before, the word was, — " Learn these lessons and continue to 
learn them, and you shall be at the head." Now, many 
things are to be learned and many things done, to get to 
the head, or to get along at all. The head is, not a certifi- 
cate, a diploma, a valedictory oration, but the leading-staff 
of empire, of authorship, of art, of business, of social or pro- 
fessional distinction. The world is full of varied interests, 
full of exigencies, full of competitors. The business of life 
is complicated, urgent, exhausting. Think of a child, a boy 
of fifteen, charged with all this care, this responsibility. It 
would confound and crush his faculties. Especially would 
it crush down all joyance and free growth. But all this, to 
right-hearted manhood, is a noble culture. Manhood has 
powers for the task. It has strength of muscle to work, 
strength of mind to act, strength of heart to endure. And 
the innocence of childhood is well exchanged for manhood's 
strength, for its courage, its manliness, its high integrity ; 
for that grand equipoise of the faculties in which it holds 
itself erect and firm, and stands before the world with foot 
and hand, and heart and mind ready for its work ; ready 
to do business, to cope with difficulties, to subdue obstacles, 
to speak and act in the affairs of men and nations. 

But the toil and strife at length are over ; the bustle 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 121 

and turmoil of life hare passed away ; age lays its chasten- 
ing hand upon the vigorous frame and the fevered passions ; 
sager and more sacred thoughts take possession of the mind ; 
the race is run, the battle is fought, the world is changed ; 
and when that winter day of life is come, and the blossoms 
of hope and the fruits of ripened friendship are all scattered 
in the dust, the man says : " Let me depart, it is good for 
me to die." 

And age too, like every other period of life, is not with- 
out its own special fitness and personal vocation. How 
else — says the poet — 

" How else couldst thou retire apart, 
With the hoarded memories of thy heart, 
And gather all, to the very least, 
Of the fragments of life's earlier feast — 
Let fall, through eagerness to find 
The coming dainties yet behind ? 
How ponder on the entire past, 
Laid together thus at last ; 
When the twilight helps to fuse 
The first fresh, with the faded hues ; 
And the outline of the whole 
Grandly fronts, for onee, thy soul." 

Anil now I say, that all this is naturally a progress in 
virtue. In one respect the visible is not an emblem of the 
spiritual life. Age, that declines in vigor, naturally grows 
in virtue. Its affections, I think, are usually as vigorous as 
those of youth ; its wisdom is, of course, far greater. I do 
not forget that it is, in some respects, peculiarly tried. It is 
hard to give up some things to which it has been accustomed 
— the activity, the control of affairs, the indulgence perhaps 
of appetite. This last point I have sometimes seen to be 
one of especial difficulty. These however, are but flaws 
upon the deep and quiet stream. 

Still, age is naturally the maturity of virtue, of piety, of 
all that is noblest in the mind. Not till approaching the 
grand climacteric, perhaps, does the character usually ar- 
rive at its highest perfection. Great intellectual power, no 
doubt, is attained earlier ; the culminating point of talent, 



122 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

authorship, statesmanship, military skill, is reached sooner ; 
but not till a later day does humanity, even when thus dis- 
tinguished, arrive at its highest wisdom, self-control, and 
sanctity ; not till then, perhaps, are the great problems of 
the inmost life solved ; the conflicting tendencies of the 
nature brought into harmony ; and the utmost aims of 
human existence achieved. To me the grandest form of 
humanity is the aged form. I had almost said the most 
attractive beauty, taking into account the manners, bearing, 
and expressions of countenance. Youth, I know, carries off 
the palm, with most persons — the fair complexion, the glossy 
hair, the smooth brow and painted cheek. It is a sort of bar- 
baric taste, I am tempted to say ; but it is so prevalent, that 
I am quite sure a good-natured indulgence will be extended 
to an opposite opinion ; it has so very little chance of pre- 
vailing. "Ay," — it will be said — " criticize as much as you 
please, the claims of youth to all beauty and outward 
charms ; they can bear it." But, in truth, the form that 
stands erect after the storms of seventy or eighty years have 
beat upon it ; the face that bears on it the marks of all 
human triumph, of the last triumph, that over itself; the 
calm dignity and gentle courtesy and forbearance, in man 
or woman, that come from long reflection and patient cul- 
ture ; the holy serenity and assured trust, caught from the 
heaven that is near, and shining through the parting shad- 
ows of life ; why, nature, I say, is not false to herself; there 
is the nobleness of humanity, and there are some of its 
noblest expressions. That aged form — how often, in fact, 
does it draw a thoughtful man in a gay company, from the 
charms of youth, and all the importunity of their attractions, 
to the side of its venerableness, wisdom, and beauty ! The 
contrary tendency in this country or any other country, the 
tendency in society to separate the aged and the young, is 
one that is to be looked upon with the greatest reprehension. 
This pushing forward of the young to take all the places in 
society, to he the whole of society, ought to be repressed by 
their elders, with dignity and authority. Depend upon it, 



ON THE PKOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 123 

that all such breaking away from the great bonds of nature, 
from the venerable sanctities of life, is essentially degrading 
even to the taste of a people ; and you may be sure that it 
is a vulgar tendency of society that leads the young to wish, 
in their chosen happy hours, to separate themselves from 
their aged friends. I am not wandering from my proper 
theme. The point which I have ventured thus plainly to 
touch, concerns not only good manners, but good culture. 
It was meant, I believe, that youth and age should exert 
upon each other a mutual influence ; that the aged should 
not want the cheering presence and attention of the young, 
nor the young, the wise and tranquillizing influence of the 
aged ; that aged life should not lack entertainment, just 
when perhaps most needing it, and that young life should 
not rush into it, without the restraints of filial tenderness 
and respect. 

Montaigne says, quoting, perhaps unconsciously, almost 
the very words of Cicero, " I had rather be old not so long, 
than to be old before the time." But we, in this country, 
think ourselves old before we are so, and actually grow old 
before we need. Society forces it upon us. " I have done 
with the world," says one ; " I am getting to be an old 
man." And so he sits in his solitary room, perhaps ; afraid 
that he shall be a burden upon the young company in an 
adjoining apartment. And suppose he is an old man — and 
not fifty, which is old for our pushing society — suppose he 
is indeed an old man ; does it follow that he has done with 
the world? Nay, if wisdom and experience and perfected 
character mean anything, he has now to exert a finer, nobler, 
and more beautiful influence upon the world, than ever. 

From the progress of life, let us now turn to the general 
structure of society, as another sphere in which the double 
nature of man plays its part. 

The world, it is said, is a corrupter. Nature has whole- 
some influences, but the world none. A comparatively safe 
abode man has, amidst the hills and waters and the free 
air ; but the moment he comes into the presence of moral 



124 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

natures all is peril and evil. Hence convents, hermitages, 
the anchorite's cell. Hence, the non-intercourse with what 
is called worldly society and its worldly ways, enjoined by 
many churches upon their members. 

But can that be altogether so f A sacred watch indeed 
for all young minds, nay, for all minds, over the influence 
that others exert upon them — this is well. But can it be 
that society, the bosom of universal nurture, bears upon it 
nothing but peril, but pollution ? Can it be that the human 
generations are brought forward in succession, only to be 
trained by selfishness, treachery, injustice, pride, and sen- 
suality ? Is this the school of humanity ? 

!N*Oj no ; we do not, and cannot think so. Let us see 
what we do think, and ought to think. 

Society then, like man, is liable to err ; so and no other- 
wise. Society is but collective humanity, the aggregate of 
individual character ; and whatever there is in the physical 
and moral constitution of man, to urge him to the right and 
to restrain him from the wrong, must be found in that same 
world which we dread and condemn. Found there ; but 
mark one difference — found sometimes, in greater, in collec- 
tive strength. For after all, the world sometimes is even a 
stronger reprover than the individual conscience ; and a 
man is all the more in danger for being alone— for not feel- 
ing the pressure of social opinion. Some dark iniquity is 
perpetrated in secret, and the light within fails to shine 
upon it and show what it is ; and its hideousness is not seen, 
till it is revealed — till it is reflected, in the mirror of all-sur- 
rounding conscience. But let us look at the great social 
ministry, and see whether it is for good or for evil ; for there 
are serious questions about it. Selfish interests — inequal- 
ities — competitions — solidarity — and the general social influ- 
ence ; these are the points to be studied. 

We say the world is selfish. Let it be ever so true — I 
shall soon have occasion to qualify the admission — but let it 
be ever so true ; yet can you pass over the remarkable fact 
that the very selfishness of society is engaged on the side of 



OX THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 125 

honesty, self-restraint, visible virtue ? Individual selfishness 
may not be ; it may choose to steal, defraud, indulge itself 
in evfl ways, in any way, it cares not what, nor how much 
to the hurt of others ; but the common selfishness resists all 
that. What does every man want of his fellow, in conver- 
sation or in business ; what is it the interest of all to de- 
mand, but truth, honesty, honor, virtue ? A man may not 
choose to practise them himself; but he wants them to be 
practised toward him. Mark it well, then ; in all ages, 
among all nations, amidst all other fluctuations and convul- 
sions of opinion, stand fraud, intemperance, licentiousness, 
branded and blackened with universal opprobrium. Selfish 
interest, mere selfish interest writes on the table of the world, 
the laws of virtue. "Why ? Because God has ordained them 
to be the laws of the common welfare. There they stand ! 
There they stand, deep and high. The mountains on their 
everlasting bases, stand not so firm as these foundation laws 
of right, in the common, the great Humanity. 

But, it may be said, selfishness, though it protects the 
right, is a bad thing still. Yes, it is a bad thing ; but is all 
selfish that we call so ? Let us not mistake here. Let us 
not champion general virtue, to the hurt of our own — like a 
man crying " famine ! " and starving to death to prove it. 
My pursuing my own interest, cultivating my own farm, 
conducting my own business, is not selfishness. I may till 
my field, and be heartily and none the less glad that my 
neighbor's is yielding him a good crop ; and that surely is 
not selfishness. I must attend to my own affairs ; I have 
no business to meddle with his. This may be called the 
isolated principle, or the selfish principle, or by whatever 
hard names men please ; but busybodies in other men's af- 
fairs — men that were often going to their neighbor's fence, 
and saying how glad they felt at his prosperity, and offering 
• excellent advice perchance, would be very troublesome 
people, at any rate. There is doubtless enough selfishness 
in the world, and it is odious enough ; the basely ambitious, 
the miserly, the inebriate, and the debauched live in the 



126 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

world ; but there is a great deal of generosity in it also ; 
there is a great deal of sympathy and feeling for one another ; 
and the common indignation that darkens the very air in 
horror, around vice and crime, has a far deeper source 
than selfish and politic resistance to a common foe. 

Let us pass to another point. One of the most annoying 
forms of selfishness is competition for the goods or honors of 
the world. This, it may be said, is not simply a pursuing 
of one's own interest, but an infringement upon others' 
interests, or a wish at least to surpass them — to get what 
they are seeking. 

Now I am not obliged to defend anything beyond the 
degree in which it actually exists ; and I am not obliged to 
defend anything which Providence has not appointed ; and 
finally, I am not obliged to defend anything which, from 
the very nature of the case, could not be prevented. I say 
then, in the first place, that in the general industry of life, 
there is little or no actual competition. The bounties of 
nature are not so stinted, that I must starve, or my neigh- 
bor. There is enough for us all. And men, generally, cul- 
tivate land, build houses, make ploughs and scythes, with 
little thought that their neighbor's successfully doing the 
same things, is any disadvantage to them. Competition is 
usually seen in trade, in the professions ; and then only or 
chiefly in the crowded centres of society. But I say, in the 
next place, that there is very commonly committed an 
egregious blunder here ; for which Providence is not respon- 
sible. And that is the blunder of supposing that there is 
a competition of interests to the extent commonly imagined ; 
that another's success is proportionably an injury to us. In- 
dividual success adds to the general wealth and prosperity ; 
it builds houses, employs laborers, rears ships, makes beau- 
tiful gardens and grounds ; and is a common benefit. Suc- 
cessful manufacture increases demand. The fame of a law- 
yer, physician, or clergyman adds to the dignity and honor 
of his profession. But suppose, in the third place, that we 
do unavoidably come to the sharp edge of competition ; two 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 127 

of us want, and cannot help wanting, the same thing — the 
same office, honor, emolument. Then, I say, as one of the 
inevitable trials of virtue, must we meet it. Then must 
that sharp edge carve out a nobleness for us, above all that 
the ordinary contacts of life can do. In no relation, per- 
haps, can men be so noble to each other, as in that of rivals ; 
and though prejudice, jealousy, and envy too often make the 
contest odious and the men odious, yet candor, kindliness, 
and generosity might, and sometimes do, clothe them with 
brighter honors than any they seek for. 

The third feature in the social condition, presenting diffi- 
culty to most men's thoughts, is inequality of lot. There is 
nothing, perhaps, about which so many minds are sore and 
vexed, as this. Keformers have considered much how they 
could remove it. Radicals have demanded that it be swept 
away entirely. " That all men are born equal " is taken 
literally by some, and held to be a good ground for keeping 
them so. Nothing in the world is inveighed against with 
such bitterness as wealth and rank. 

Now hereditary rank, supported by entailed estates, I 
admit to be a great social injustice. But passing by these 
human arrangements, and coming down to the general fact, 
to the providential order, I should like to have some one 
tell me, how it is possible to prevent inequality, ay, and 
great inequality of lot, without breaking down entirely the 
free will, the free energy by which the world is a world, 
and not a mere system of machinery. Make all men 
equal to-day; give them equal property, equal means, 
equal comforts. Difference, ay, the hated distinction, 
begins to-morrow, as surely as they are left to act 
freely. 

Let us accept, then, this fact of inequality as inevitable, 
and see whether it is at war with social justice or improve- 
ment. Is it at war with social justice ? Certainly the very 
opposite is the truth. Perfect and perpetual equality of lot 
would be the most manifest mjustice. It would not be re- 
warding men according to their deeds, but the very con- 



128 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

trary. Sluggards and knaves might like it, but nobody else 
could. 

And then with regard to improvement — if all men stood 
upon an exact level, how much of the necessary and palpa- 
ble stimulus to exertion would be taken away ! If I saw 
no man above me in any respect, I should be apt to be con- 
tent with what I am ; I should fail perhaps to be reminded 
that there is anything higher for me to attain. The child, 
for instance, stands to his parent in the relation of inequal- 
ity ; but suppose he did not ; suppose he saw, or thought, 
his parent to be no wiser nor stronger than he ; he would 
be in a deplorable condition for his improvement. Indeed 
this whole strife for visible preeminence overrates the prize 
altogether— undervalues the inward strength and nobleness, 
of which it is properly nothing but the symbol ; and ought 
to drive men upon that inward sufficiency as, the only relief 
from envy, jealousy and base ambition. 

But it may be said, there is something more trying in 
the problem of society, than competition, and that is, this 
terrible solidarity — the suffering caused us by others — suffer- 
ing of the innocent for the guilty ; suffering, proceeding 
from individuals, but spreading far and wide; running 
through all the fibres of social existence. The answer is — 
could there be society without this exposure ? Manifestly 
not. Without sympathy, there could be no society ; with 
it, there must be pain for others' afflictions ; ay, and suffer- 
ing, loss, trouble, from others' errings. 

And this necessity, like every other in the system, is 
turned into a beneficent law. The care for one another — 
that most anxious and watchful care, that others, our chil- 
dren, our relatives, our friends, should do well ; the feeling 
on the part of the tempted man, that a thousand eyes are 
turned toward him — eyes that will kindle with joy at his 
well-doing, and that would weep bitterly over his fall ; all 
this is a conservative force, to preserve the virtue of men, 
and to prevent aberration — a force lent by the union of all 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 129 

sympathy ; and without which, it is manifest, society could 
not stand. As in the system of nature, it is said that 
every particle of matter, though it be upon a dunghill, con- 
tributes to the universal order ; so in the system of society, 
the poorest creature in the world, one that lies upon that 
dunghill, has relations to the welfare of all ; all power and 
wealth and well-being are worse off for him. It is true ; it 
is inevitable ; it is well ; and well were it, if we more thought- 
fully laid it to heart. 

Having thus attempted to meet the leading questions 
that arise with regard to the great social discipline of Hu- 
manity, let us now turn to its direct and unquestionable in- 
strumentality. 

Society is the great educator. More than universities, 
more than schools, more than books, society educates. Na- 
ture is the schoolhouse, and many lessons are written upon 
its walls; but man is the effective teacher. Parents, rela- 
tives, friends, associates ; social manners, maxims, morals, 
worships, the daily example, the fireside conversation, the 
casual interview, the spirit that breathes through the whole 
atmosphere of life — these are the powers and influences that 
train the mass of mankind. Even books, which are daily 
assuming a larger place in human training, are but the in- 
fluence of man on man. 

It is evident that one of the leading and ordained means by 
which men are raised in the scale of knowledge and virtue, 
is the conversation, example, influence of men superior 
to themselves. It seems, if one may say so, to be the pur- 
pose, the intent, the effort of nature — of Providence, to 
bring men together, and to bring them together, for the most 
part, in relations of discipleship and teaching. The social 
nature, first, draws them to intercourse. Perpetual solitari- 
ness is intolerable. But then, much of their intercourse is 
on terms of inequality. Equals in age, people in society, 
seldom meet, but one is able to teach or tell something, and 
the other is desirous to learn it. The lower are strongly 
drawn to the higher. Children are not content to be always 
9 



130 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

by themselves ; curiosity, reverence, filial affection draw 
them to their superiors. In the whole business of life — 
tillage, mechanism, manufacture, merchandise — a younger 
generation is connected with an elder, to be taught by it. 
Barbarous tribes go on forever in their barbarism, till they 
are brought into the presence of superior culture. The Chi- 
nese exclusion has kept that people stationary, though civil- 
ization has been knocking at their gates for more than three 
centuries.* And it is better — I speak of mere results, not 
principles — that the way for light should be opened into 
that country by English cannon balls, or the rending asun- 
der of the empire, than never to be opened. But such a 
fixed barrier to civilization is a solitary phenomenon in his- 
tory. Nations, the barbarous and civilized, by some means 
or other, in the everlasting ferment of human interests and 
passions, are thrown into communication and interfusion 
— if by no better means, by war, by subjugation, by capture ; 
for Providence, if one may say so, will have them come to- 
gether. Human injustice and cruelty are not to be abetted in 
this matter. There are better ways, which Christian civiliza- 
tion ought to learn — travel, trade, missions of light and mer- 
cy ; but, some way, the nations must mingle together, or the 
ignorant will never be enlightened, the savage never civilized. 

Where are the ruder peasantry of Europe now resorting, 
for work and for subsistence ? To the heart of England and 
America. Many an enlightened man, building a railroad, 
or improving his estate, many a refined woman in her house- 
hold, is made their teacher — little suspecting the office, per- 
haps. It were fortunate, I think, for both parties, if they 
did ; it might make the relation more kindly and holy ; but 
any way, the work will be done. 

How fine and delicate and penetrating is this power of 
man to influence his kind ! A word, a tone, a look — nothing 
goes to the depths of the soul like that. The dexterous hands, 
and the embracing arms, the commanding eye and the per- 
suasive lips and the stately presence are fitted for nothing 

* Williams's " Middle Kingdom," chap. xxi. 



ON THE PKOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 131 

more remarkably than to teach. Travelling on a railroad, 
one day, I saw a little child in the company of some half a 
dozen affectionate relatives. From hand to hand it passed — 
to be amused, to be soothed, to be taught something from 
moment to moment — to receive many lessons, and more 
caresses, all the day long. u Here," I thought with myself, 
" is a company of unpaid, loving, willing, unwearied teach- 
ers. Such governesses could scarce be hired on any terms." 
Well, it was not a nobleman's child; it was not a rich man's 
child, that I know ; every man's child has such training. 
The same thing, substantially, is passing in every house 
where childhood lives, every day. 

How sharp, too, and jealous, is the guardianship of soci- 
ety over the virtue of its members ! How preventive and 
corrective are its sorrow and indignation at their failures ! A 
parent's grief is such a warning and retribution as prisons 
and dungeons could not bring upon his erring child. And 
then it is to be observed that the grosser and more ruinous 
vices are such as soon betray themselves, and cannot be long 
concealed. The police of society is very likely to find them 
out. And selfishness, covetousness, vanity, do not escape. 
The repulsive atmosphere of common feeling about the self- 
ish man, the cold shadow in which the miser walks, the 
stinging criticisms upon the vain man, proclaim that society 
is not an idle censor. What does public opinion brand, 
what does literature satirize, all over the world, but the faults 
and foibles of men % Society has thrones for the good and 
noble, and purple and gold are but rags and dust in the com- 
parison. Society has prisons and penitentiaries for the base 
and bad, and stone walls and silent cells are not so cold and 
death-like. 

Let us now proceed to a third subject presented by the 
complex nature of man, and that is, the relation of sex, and 
the consequent order of the family. 

This great bond of many interwoven relations — home — is 
deserving, at the present day, of some special attention and 
study. The facility and extent of modern intercourse tend 



132 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

to create a kind of cosmospolite feeling in the world. Col- 
onization, too, weakens the family ties. Increasing luxury, 
the expensiveness of living — one of the worst effects of our 
artificial civilization — is unfriendly to marriage. Engrossing 
business, especially in cities, is drawing away the attention 
of many from home and home culture. Withal, some of 
the social reforms are directly proposing to substitute joint- 
stock corporations for separate and independent households. 
Amidst these tendencies, let us see if we can find what is the 
order of nature, and why it is established. 

What, then, makes the family ? What is it that carries 
man beyond community, neighborhood, society, friendship, 
to this inner circle of life ? What makes the family? It is 
an institution so established and universal that few, perhaps, 
have ever asked themselves the question ; and yet it involves, 
as I conceive, some of the profoundest views of the wisdom 
of Providence. 

In the human relation of sex, then, is laid the foundation 
for home. In this, that is to say, is laid the foundation for 
a peculiar and permanent attachment, which leads the sub- 
jects of it to wish to dwell together, and apart from others. 
Thus the great Master says, that God made them male and 
female, that they two should become one ; that they should 
be united in an interest that separates them from others. 
On this purpose and intent of Heaven, He founded the 
sanctity of marriage. Suppose the distinction of sex not to 
exist, and that there were no such attachment as is now 
founded upon it, and no such relation of two persons to cer- 
tain other persons who are their children, as is now estab- 
lished ; and then it is evident that although there might be 
social ties and temporary unions of friendship, and even a 
common residence, there could be no family. Men might 
be gregarious, but they could not be domestic. They might 
live together, but they could not be one, in that almost mys- 
terious tie of affinity and kindred. 

Next, to strengthen the family bond, another provision 
is made. Why does not the infant child, like the young of 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 133 

animals, arrive in a few days or weeks at its maturity, and 
the ability to take care of itself? I know of no ultimate 
reason for this, but the purpose of Heaven to " set the sol- 
itary in families." Children might have been formed as 
well to come to maturity — certainly to physical maturity — 
in twenty weeks, as in twenty years. A twenty years' care 
of their offspring is assigned to parents, in order to establish 
a school of natural and moral influence. The school-houses 
of a nation, indicate its purpose to give its children a certain 
technical education. The domestic abodes of the world 
manifest a purpose of the overruling Providence, no less clear 
and explicit. Youthful love and parental affection, which 
are of God's creating and not ours, lay every corner-stone 
in them, and raise every protecting wall. In idle uncon- 
sciousness may that love between the sexes grow up ; the 
theme of jesting comment may it be, to those around ; but 
such is its great mission ; such is the solemn bond which it 
lays upon the world. The problem of parental love and 
filial subjection, may be wrought out with weariness and 
sorrow, or with thoughtless, or with reflecting and holy glad- 
ness ; but such is the momentous solution of that problem. 

We have said that society is the great educator. The 
family is the primary school of that education. The pupils 
are children — delicate in frame, docile in spirit, susceptible 
of influence. Nor is it easy, if indeed it is possible, to con- 
ceive how the object could have been effected without that 
relation. I have said in a former lecture, that the only con- 
ceivable beginning of existence for a rational being, is infan- 
cy — a state, that is to say, of ignorance and destitution ; in 
which impressions, knowledge, virtue, holiness are to be 
acquired / since those things are by definition matters of 
experience and volition, and incapable of creation. Had 
man been full formed at once then — i. e., not in knowledge 
and virtue, but in mere strength of body and mind, which is 
conceivable — had there been thus far a state of physical and 
mental equality, the rigid fibre would have found its fellow 
in the obstinate will, and neither would, nor could perhaps, 



134 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

have yielded to the voice of instruction, nor to the sway of 
discipline. But a child's docility, a child's meekness — 
could we understand it — is something heaven-sent, some- 
thing, I had almost said, fearful to contemplate. The min- 
gled veneration and love, with which it looks up to a good 
parent ; the mingled wonder and fear, with which it looks 
up to a bad parent, who has lost in vice or rage the govern- 
ment of himself; what contrast on earth could be more 
touching ! Alas ! in how many dwellings stands that poor 
stricken child, gazing with awe and terror upon the frenzy 
of inebriety or the fury of anger, and parting not with its 
meekness and submissiveness, amidst all its agonies and 
wrongs. It is God's child, not man's ; and might well be 
the minister of God to the evil man — nay, and is so. 

Scarcely less remarkable is the influence of the family 
state upon its elder members. Marriage recalls man from 
what would be otherwise his wild roving through the world, 
and assigns to him a home. That home becomes the nat- 
ural centre of his affections, cares and labors. But for this 
bond, life would be nomadic, and its ties transient as the 
traveller's footstep. This gives a sphere, a locality to 
human pursuit, makes of it a regular, concentrated indus- 
try, makes frugality, foresight, care, self-restraint necessary, 
calls sympathy to the bedside of sickness and suffering, and 
turns man's dwelling into a sanctuary of sorrow, a memo- 
rial of death, and threshold of eternity. But I need not dwell 
longer upon so familiar a theme as the good influence of 
home. 

I only wish you distinctly to see what is the origin of 
this institution. It is divine ; and because it is divine, it is 
universal. Amidst the wide wandering of men upon earth, 
diversified by all the varieties of condition and culture, there 
is one tie, drawing evermore to one spot — one heart-drawing 
evermore to one magnetic centre ; and if I were to put the 
question to the whole human race — what is that ? — the an- 
swer would be, it is home. Before government, before so- 
ciety, city, community existed, there was a home. It is no 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 135 

human, no civil, no factitious institution. God made it. It 
was rooted in the foundations of the world. From the 
brooding darkness of primeval time, the first objects that 
emerge to sight are homes — not nations, but families. It 
was a home that floated upon the waters of the great Del- 
uge. The first altar built on Ararat was the home-altar. 
It was the home-altar that lighted the steps of men and gen- 
erations in their wide dispersion over the earth. It was 
" the pillar of cloud and fire ; " and if that light had gone 
out, the human race would have become extinct. 

The first brand of misery upon the human brow, and the 
darkest to-day, is excision from home. God pity such an out- 
cast ! But how few such are there ! Outcast from every other 
tie a man may be ; — but find the veriest wretch that roams 
the earth or the sea ; and one spot there is to which he clings 
with a saving confidence, if there be any saving for him : he 
knows — he knows that there is one place on earth where the 
memory and care of him linger, and live, and can never 
die. 

I have spoken now of the one grand object of the dis- 
tinction of the sexes. I say nothing of the direct, personal 
relation considered by itself. It is difficult to speak of it — a 
difficulty lying in the very delicacy and depth of the rela- 
tion. There is, perhaps, a mystery in this marriage of 
hearts, which we cannot understand. It is a union beyond 
worldly interest, beyond selfish attachment, beyond friend- 
ship ; it is the union of natures, counterpart to one another, 
of which the two make one, in a sense pertaining to no other 
human relation. Certainly if the world were occupied by 
men or by women alone, it would be but half a world. The 
grace and charm of life would be gone ; and each would 
roam through the earth, in comparatively sad and solitary 
isolation. And whoever would blend the sexes, blot out the 
distinction, make their pursuits and callings the same, their 
very dress the same, would be guilty of treason, not to man 
or woman only, but to the majesty of Providence itself. 

Finally, there is, in the complex nature of man, a bond 



136 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

and a balance of its powers and tendencies, most worthy to 
be observed. 

The union of the mind and body commonly called a 
mystery, is more than that ; it is a wonder. The rushing 
tide that pours through the heart, swollen and discharged 
sixty or seventy times a minute, for eighty years, without 
wearing away its channel — this is a commonly cited in- 
stance. But more miraculous still, perhaps, is the human 
head. That the mind should be linked with a substance so 
frail and fragile as the brain, seated in a mesh like gossamer, 
not on a marble throne ; that its fiery thoughts should not tear 
it in pieces ; that its swelling emotions should not burst the 
delicate integument ; that it should keep sane and strong 
when one thread diseased deranges all ; that it should so 
long keep touch and time, when thrilling nerves and throb- 
bing ganglions are its ministers — this is the wondrous bond 
and balance of soul and body. 

Look at this balance of the faculties, mental, moral, and 
physical, in a larger view. See how all those tendencies 
and impulses, which left to themselves would go to destruc- 
tion, are restrained by one another, and by the union of all. 
By the constitution of our nature, the raging appetites, the 
wayward passions themselves are bonds. Anger is exhausted 
by its own violence, and sinks to pity at the wound it in- 
flicts. Natural affection in its rudest state, is yet to tie to 
something. Passion, I say, is itself restraint. Bonds are 
woven out of the free and wild affections. Man must love. 
Then something must he love — wife, children, home, friend. 
He must sustain relations — to cherished childhood, or to 
beseeching weakness and tenderness. All his passions, 
then, his loves, hates, hopes, fears, unite to put and press 
and drive him into some controlling and protecting order. 
The leading, visible form of that order is Government. 
That great bond that holds a nation together, is spun and 
woven out of the texture and strife of all human passions 
and interests. Government is not a thing of chance or of 
will, but of necessity, of God. 






ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 137 

Nor only so ; not only is there a bond, but there is, as I 
was saying, a balance among the human powers that tends 
to control and keep them right — to keep them, at any rate, 
from the uttermost wrong. Man is a kingdom ; and no 
political balance of powers was ever so exquisite and admi- 
rable as the equilibrium of forces in him. There are the 
citizen affections ; there is the populace of the passions : 
and their interests are opposite, their control mutual. There 
is the mob of reckless and raging desires; but sobriety, 
thoughtfulness, order come to meet it. . Or ambition arises, 
and would sweep to its end, over a kingdom in ruins, but 
private regards come to check it ; those human hearts that 
it would tread and crush beneath its feet, put forth tendrils 
and snares that entangle and fetter its reckless strides. And 
everywhere, sobering fact, sobering labor, tame down the 
impulses of imagination and appetite — of wild dreaming or 
wild craving of fortunes, honors, splendors, gratifications. 
Everywhere the rushing tides of passion are met by cross 
currents, and are met too by the rugged shores of circum- 
stance and necessity. Ay, necessity, like an iron fate, stands 
in the way ; weakness, sickness, pain, death, stand in the 
way ; and heat and cold and storm, and ocean waves, and 
rocky heights, and the cold bare mountains of limitation 
and difficulty, stand as barriers against the wide-flowing 
desolations of passion and vice and violence. 

Thus it is in all nature and life ; for humanity, in this 
balance of its powers, is both influenced and imaged by the 
universe around it. Any one of the agencies within us or 
around us, left to operate alone, would destroy alike the 
order of nature and humanity. This atmosphere, you know, 
in which we move so easily and lightly, sustains us, as it 
were, with millions of elastic and invisible cords ; so that if 
a vacuum were suddenly produced beneath us or by our 
side, we should be instantly crushed to the earth, as by the 
weight of a mountain. So it is with the balance of our in- 
tellectual powers; let one faculty be struck away, and 
everything falls into ruins. 



138 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

Thus man stands, amidst universal nature and life, in the 
very equilibrium of contending forces ; where attraction 
balances attraction, and power checks power ; where heat 
and cold, winds and waters, swell up to the point that is 
necessary to sustain him; and his sport and his play is 
amidst waves of infinite motion and heavings of boundless 
might — on the very verge of precipices from which he never 
falls, and amidst the vibrations of vast elements which hold 
and rock him as a child in their protecting arms. Thus the 
powers of nature, both material and moral, like reined 
coursers, are held beneath some mighty hand ; and man is 
borne onward in the car of life, amidst all but bursting 
thunder and whelming earthquake ; borne gently and 
smoothly ; his repose the product of infinite conflict ; and 
the very music of his joys the harmony of that which, un- 
restrained, would be boundless discordance and destruction. 



LEOTUEE TIL 

ON THE SPECIAL INFLUENCE UPON HUMAN CULTURE OF 
THE DISCIPLINE OF NATURE, OF THE OCCUPATIONS OF 
LIFE, AND OF THE ARTS OF EXPRESSION; OR, THE 
MENTAL AND MORAL ACTIVITY ELICITED BY MANS 
CONNECTION WITH NATURE AND LIFE. 

Thus far in these lectures, we have done, or attempted 
to do, two things. First, we hare laid down the foundation 
principles, the basis in theory, of the problem of human 
destiny : and that we found, in the necessary character of a 
creation, whether material or moral ; and especially in the 
natural impossibility of conferring unmixed and uncondi- 
tioned good upon rational beings. Next, we have shown 
the actual basis of the problem ; the basis of it, so to speak, 
as a working problem ; and this we found in the frame of 
the world ; in the arrangements of material and animal 
nature, in the physical organization of man, in his mental 
and moral constitution, and in his complex nature. 

Now, out of this basis spring certain forms of human 
activity. These are to be considered in this lecture ; and 
the conditions of that activity, the helps and the hindran- 
ces, in the next. 

I am about to lead you, my friends, into actual life, into 
the bosom of human experience. But because it is the ac- 
tual, common, daily scene that will be before our eyes, I 
must pray you not to overlook the stupendous moral, the 
sublime end, to which it points. I do not propose to teach 
you a transcendental philosophy, but a philosophy that 



140 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

mixes itself up with the very life that we live, and the very 
being that we are. 

¥e are then to consider, at present, certain forms of 
human activity that are developed from nature and life. 
"With this view we shall consider man in two points of light 
■ — first, as nature takes him in hand ; and next, as Provi- 
dence apprentices him to certain life-tasks. I say he is ap- 
prenticed to them ; and that, by an indenture of older than 
feudal or Roman date. In all that is circumstantial, man 
is less free than he is apt to think. Thus, he does not sow 
nor reap, does not fabricate things, nor trade in them — does 
not write deeds nor prescriptions, nor sermons nor poems — 
does not paint nor sing, nor make statues nor buildings nor 
books, simply because he fancied to do so, but because there 
was an irresistible necessity or impulse to do these things. 
The activity, art, occupation of life, could not have taken 
other forms, at man's pleasure ; he was obliged to adopt 
these. He walks in the leading strings of a Wisdom higher 
than his own ; and one of the objects of this lecture, is to 
show how they are fitted to influence him, and to affect the 
general order of the world. 

But, in the first place, we are to consider how it is that 
nature takes him in hand — to move, to influence, to instruct 
him. 

I have already spoken of nature's influence. I have 
spoken of its fertility, order, and beauty, as ministering both 
to human convenience and human culture. But I wish to 
press the consideration to another point — to that develop- 
ment and specific direction of the human faculties, to which 
it drives and compels us. It is necessary to return to this 
subject of nature's influence again and again, in order to 
meet the objections that arise from this quarter. Objec- 
tions, I say ; for it is a problem that I am dealing with ; 
and it is natural that my discourse should often be colored 
by this aspect of the matter in hand. 

There has always been a theory in the world, that mat- 
ter is essentially antagonistic, hostile to mind. And a very 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 141 

strange theory it is certainly ; that the very sphere for man, 
the very house of life, should be regarded, not as built for 
his convenience, comfort and growth, but as thrown down 
in his path, to be an obstruction and hindrance to him. But 
such has been a very prevalent way of thinking. There is 
much ancient philosophy and much modern poetry, to this 
purpose, whose effect needs to be examined. One of the old 
Manichsean writers — and they professed to be Christians too, 
some of them — speaks of the " bad principle " in the world, 
as self-existent ; and hostile not only to man, but to God. 
Sometimes he calls this bad principle nature; sometimes 
matter ; sometimes Satan, and devil.* Plato, wisest of the 
heathen, makes Socrates say, in the Phsedo : " There is 
another pure earth, above the pure heavens, where the stars 
are, which is commonly called ether. The earth we inhabit 
is properly nothing else than the sediment of the other : 
upon which we are scattered, like so many ants dwelling in 
holes, or like frogs that live in some marsh near the sea. 
We are immersed in these cells, he says — mewed up within 
some hole of the earth ; " and he maintains that it is the 
great business of a wise man to prepare to die, and to escape 
from a world full of fetters, clogs, and obstructions. 

Let us see if with better lights we cannot better under- 
stand this constitution of things — i. e., of nature and of 
humanity as placed in the midst of it. Nature, it is true, 
does not spread for man a soft couch to lull him to repose ; 
nor does she set around that couch abundant supplies, 
which it requires only the stretching out of his hand to ob- 
tain. For the animal races she does so provide. She pre- 
pares food and clothing for them, with little care of theirs. 
She spreads their table, for which no cookery is needed ; she 
weaves and fits their garments without loom or needle ; and 
her trees and caves and rocks are their habitations. Yet 
man is said to be her favorite, and so he is ; but thus does 
she deal with her favorite : she turns him out, naked, cold 
and shivering upon the earth ; with needs that admit of no 

* Lardner's Works, vol. ii. p. 189. 



142 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

compromise ; with a delicate frame that cannot lie upon the 
bare ground an hour, but must must have immediate pro- 
tection ; with a hunger that cannot procrastinate the needed 
supply, but must be fed to-day and every day ; and now, 
why is all this ? I suppose, if man could have made of the 
earth a bed ; and if an apple or a chestnut a day could 
have sufficed him for food ; he would have got his barrel of 
apples or his bushel of chestnuts, and lain down upon the 
earth and done nothing — till the stock was gone. But 
nature will not permit this. I say, will not permit it. For 
hers is no voluntary system. She has taken a bond of man 
for the fulfilment of one of her primary objects — his activ- 
ity ; because, if he were left to indolence, all were lost. 
That bond is as strong as her own ribbed rocks, and close 
pressing upon man, as the very flesh in which it is folded 
and sealed. So is this solid and insensible world filled with 
meaning to him ; the blind and voiceless elements seem to 
look upon him and speak to him ; and the dark clothing of 
flesh and sense which is wrapped around him, becomes a 
network of moral tissues ; and everything says, " Arouse thy- 
self ! up and be doing ! for nature — the system of things, 
will not have thee here, on any other terms." 

But what, again, does nature demand of this activity. 
The answer is, discretion. Immediately and inevitably a 
principle of intelligence is infused into this activity. Im- 
mediately the agent becomes a pupil. Nature all around, 
says even to infancy — what all human speech says to it — ■ 
" take care ! " It is, all over the world, the first phrase of 
the parent's teaching, the first of the child's learning — 
" take care ! " And this phrase but interprets what nature 
says to all her children. Not as an all-indulgent mother 
does she receives them to her lap, but with a certain mat- 
ronly sobriety, ay, and " the graver countenance of love " 
— saying, " take care — smooth paths are not around thee, 
but stones and stubs, thorns and briers ; soft elements alone 
do not embosom thee, but drenching rains will visit thee, 
and chilling dews, and winter's blast, and summer's heat ; 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 143 

harmless tilings are not these around thee, but, see ! here is 
fire that may burn, and water that may drown ; here are 
unseen damps and secret poisons, the rough bark of trees 
and sharp points of contact. Thou must learn, or thou must 
suffer." 

Ay, suffer ! What human school has a discipline like 
nature's ? In these schools, we are apt to think, that punish- 
ments are cruel and degrading. But nature has whips and 
stripes for the negligent. Her discipline strikes deep; it 
stamps itself upon the human frame — and upon what a 
frame ! All softness, all delicacy ; not clothed with the 
mail of leviathan, nor endowed with interior organs like 
those of the ostrich or the whale, and yet a frame strong 
with care, while weakest of all things without it. What a 
wonderful organ, in this view, is the human stomach ! the 
main source of energy to the system, strong enough to di- 
gest iron and steel, working like some powerful machine, 
and yet, do you let it be overworked or otherwise injured, 
and it is the most delicate and susceptible of all things — 
trembling like an aspen leaf at every agitation, and sinking 
and fainting under a feather's weight of food or drink. 
What a system, in this view, is that of the nerves ! insensi- 
ble as leathern thongs in their health — trembling cords of 
agony in their disease ! 

I would not dwell upon these matters as abstract facts. 
I would have my discourse teach, as nature teaches. Do you 
not see the wonder which nature and humanity thus present 
to us ? Do you not see man as a frail and delicate child, cast 
into the bosom of universal teaching ? Ay, that teaching- 
comes out to him in tongues of flame, and it penetrates his 
hand in the little, seemingly useless, thorn, and it assails his 
foot with stones of stumbling ; and it flashes into his eyes 
with the light of day ; and it broods over his path with the 
darkness of night ; and it sweeps around his head with the 
wings of the tempest ; and it startles him to awe and fear 
with the crash of thunder. The universe is not more filled 
with light and air and solid matter, than it is filled and 
crowded with wisdom and instruction. 



144 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

But more, far more than this does nature teach ; not 
activity or self-care alone, but a larger wisdom. To show 
this fully, we should be obliged to enter the vast domain of 
modern science. What can we possibly say, in the few 
words for which we have space here, upon a theme so im- 
mense and magnificent ? 

But in what I shall say, let me still speak of man as na- 
ture's pupil. It is common, I know, in this connection, to 
celebrate the achievements of man ; to say " how much has 
he discovered and learned." But the true philosopher is dis- 
posed rather to say, how much does nature teach, and how 
much have I yet to learn ! The dying words of the great 
La Place, when he withdrew his eyes from those depths of 
heaven which he had so profoundly studied — his last words 
were : " That which I know is limited ; that which I do not 
know is infinite." What noble devotees indeed have been 
found at the shrine of nature ! Anaxagoras and Aristotle, and 
Copernicus and Kepler, and Galileo, and Newton, and the 
Herschels, and Boyle, and Davy, and Cuvier, and Ehrenberg, 
and Blumenbach, and Berzelius, and many who bear up the 
honors of those great names at the present day, besides a 
multitude of a kindred spirit, though of less fame, who morn- 
ing and evening, at noonday and at midnight, are watching 
by all the avenues and at all the gates of this sublime temple. 
Secrets unimaginable are yet to be detected, wonders upon 
wonders are yet to be unfolded; and that the wise well 
kno"w. 

But let us glance a moment at some of its actual revela- 
tions. 

Light passes at the rate of twelve millions of miles in a 
minute.* Sir William Herschel was of opinion that by the 
aid of his 40-feet reflector his eye descried nebulas (now 
mostly resolved into stars,) from which it would take the 

* It is not material to the statement whether light is regarded as a substance, 
or whether, according to the later theory, the effect of light is produced by the 
vibrations of some substance — some infinitely diffused ether. In this case the 
vibrations pass with equal rapidity — a fact, more wonderful still. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 145 

light nearly two millions of years to reach us.* Professor 
Mchol says that Lord Rosse's telescope certainly penetrates 
a depth from which the light would require 60,000 years to 
come to us. Struck with these statements, and feeling as if 
there must be some extravagance or vagueness about them, 
I turned to Sir John Herschel's Elementary Treatise on As- 
tronomy, and there I find it stated that the period cannot be 
less than a thousand years ; how much more is unknown. 
Subsequent calculations have proved, I believe, that it can- 
not be less than ten thousand. 

Let it be observed that I am now speaking of our own 
system ; not, indeed, the solar system, but that vast bed of 
stars called the Galaxy, which, in the line of its extension, 
gathers so many stars to the sight as to present that whitish 
appearance which we call the Milky Way. And yet this is 
now discovered to be but one of many universes. Posse's 
telescope has dissolved into systems of countless stars, the 
nebulse that had been descried in the far-lying regions of 
space. And of these systems — these universes — vast per- 
haps as our own, more than 2,000 have been seen and num- 
bered. 

Well may ours be called a universe — whether we con- 
sider its vastness or its order. We have said that from some 
of its bodies a ray of light takes 10,000, and it may be 50,000, 
years to reach us. It scarcely matters, to any conception 
we can form, tvhich estimate we adopt. But think of it !• 
Before the time of Sesostris, before the earliest date of re- 
corded time, it may be, that ray of light left its home, and 
through distances awful and inconceivable it has come, trav- 
ersing twelve millions of miles in a minute, and reporting 
of unnumbered millions of resplendent suns, scattered like 
star-dust through that illimitable infinitude of space. 

But again, all these millions of spheres which compose our 
universe are revolving around one central point — the star 
Alcyone, in the constellation Pleiades — at the rate of about 

* Philosophical Transactions for 1802, p. 498. See note in Humboldt's Cos- 
mos, vol. 1, p. 154, Am. Ed. 
10 



146 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

400,000 miles each day. And all these universes, it may be, 
are revolving around another centre — the throne of the In- 
finite Might. 

And yet, when we turn to the opposite extreme, scarce 
less a wonder meets us. Millions of creatures, organized, 
active, sportive, live in a drop of water. The galionella, an 
extinct species of animalcule, was an organized being, and 
had a kind of integument like a shell. And Ehrenberg tells 
us that in a single cubic inch of the polishing slate of Bilin 
are forty thousand millions of the silicious frames of the 
galionella.* 

In this awful universe, we need not say, is stupendous 
power. It is in the roll and sweep of infinite systems ; but 
it is also, and long was unsuspected, in the very bosom of 
the air around us. Take four cubic feet of the vapor that 
softly steals from the river's bosom ; and it is seemingly 
nothing ; you wave your hand in it as if it were nothing ; 
and yet in the expansion and contraction of those four cubic 
feet of vapor, is power enough to move long trains of heavy- 
laden cars through our fields, as swiftly almost as the bird 
flies. For myself, I must confess that I can never cease to 
look with wonder at this marvel that is daily before my 
eyes. And for the swiftness of nature's messengers — what 
are these that are darting on telegraphic lines over our 
heads, and bearing living thoughts, hundreds of miles in an 
instant ! The time may soon come, when a man shall send 
his fireside talk in a moment, from the tropic to the pole, 
and tell of marriage or birth, of sickness or death, even 
while it is passing, to his friend, half across the globe. The 
time may come when the earth shall be a vast whispering- 
gallery, and thoughts shall circulate around it, as freely as 
sunbeams. 

"Why do we not tremble with fear, amidst the swiftness 
and power of these tremendous agents in nature ? It is, be- 
cause we believe in an infinite Order — an infinite Goodness. 

It is a marvellous confidence. It is a solemn thing to live 

i 

* See Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. 1, p. 150, Am. ed. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 147 

as we do — to live thus as children of faith. "VVe recline 
upon the bosom of this tremendous Nature, where there is 
power enough within the wave of our hand, to tear us ten 
thousand times in pieces, as confidingly as in the lap of a 
parent. Our knowledge of things around us is small ; but 
our faith boundless. To the little child, nature is a stran- 
ger, and has some rough points about her ; but how soon 
does he come to look upon her as a mother ! See him bask- 
ing in the sunshine, bathing in the water, running in. the 
fields, with his bright locks floating in the wind : every- 
where he feels as if kind arms were around him. He con- 
fides in the uniform beneficence of nature. If he had studied 
her millions of years, he could not be more sure. How 
knoweth he this so surely ? It is because not you nor I, but 
God, hath taught that weak and innocent child. " And 
thus," says Chalmers, with equal justness and beauty, " a 
truth, the uniformity of nature, which would seem to re- 
quire Omniscience for its grasp, as co-extensive with all 
nature and all history, is deposited by the hand of God, in 
the little cell of a nurseling's cogitations." * 

From this survey of nature, not merely as the theatre of 
human training, whose general structure is fitted for that 
end — which was the subject of a former lecture — but of 
nature as effectually enforcing and impressively teaching 
certain things — activity, self-care and a wider and diviner 
intelligence, let us now turn to the specific tasks that are set 
for man in the field of life. These are the occupations of 
life ; embracing in their range, all its laborious pursuits, its 
practical arts, and learned professions. And I wish to make 
it appear, as I have already said, that these are all a part of 
the system of things, in which we are placed. Some of 
these occupations are looked upon as degrading ; some as 
hard and almost cruel. In some — and this is sometimes 
particularly felt in the learned professions — many persons 
so little distinguish themselves, that there is nothing to grat- 
ify their ambition, and they become discouraged and dis- 

* Chalmer's Bridgewater Treatise, p. 203, Am. Ed. 



148 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

heartened in their callings. JSTow in all these pursuits and 
professions, it ought to be felt that there is a duty imposed 
by the Great Taskmaster ; which it is well and right and 
honorable to discharge. I have been struck with observing 
how much, in the popular literature of England, in the bal- 
lads and songs for instance, this sense of duty is urged, 
and especially upon one particular class. I mean military 
men. In the songs of Dibdin for instance, this is very strik- 
ing. The common sailor is taught to feel that he is to stand 
in his lot, however humble, because it is his duty. And 
equally true is it that this is to be every man's strength and 
stay in his daily tasks — duty. "We cannot get along with- 
out it. 

Let us, in the first place, cast a glance at these tasks, to 
see how they spring from the necessity of things, and are 
the ordained vocations of men. 

The feudal system, and its predecessor, the slave system, 
never wrought a greater or more pernicious falsehood into 
the history of human life, than this — that labor is degrad- 
ing, a thing to be deprecated and shunned ; and that idle- 
ness — doing nothing — is the honored and happy condition. 
The great visible fact of the world, is work, and first of all, 
work upon the world itself; that is to say, tilling the soil. 
The entire human race draws subsistence from the earth 
upon this condition — work, as truly as all plants and trees 
derive their life through the roots that connect them with 
the ground. Instead of roots, human hands are stretched 
out to draw supplies from the earth and from the sea. Not 
that every man is a farmer or a fisherman ; but every man 
— artisan, merchant, or professional man — does something 
that connects him with that supply. Next, manufacture — 
the cooking of food, the weaving of wool and cotton into 
fashioning of stone and wood and the metals 
id furniture, and a thousand conveniences — it 
is an ordinance. Then again, trade — the merchant's voca- 
tion — the exchange of the productions of different countries 
and climates ; it is an ordinance. How idle to say, by way of 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 149 

objection, that it produces nothing ! Exchange is as neces- 
sary to human comfort and civilization, as production. Are 
the learned professions any less ordinances — functions or- 
dained in the very nature and necessity of things ? All men 
cannot study the laws of the human constitution, the symp- 
toms of disease and the methods of cure ; therefore there 
must be physicians. Men generally cannot devote them- 
selves to the education of their children ; therefore there 
must be teachers of reading, writing, numbers — of sciences, 
languages, music, painting, etc. Numerous relations neces- 
sarily spring up between persons, estates, lands, chattels. 
The rights of men to property and personal security ; the 
ascertaining and defining of those rights by able treatises 
and carefully-drawn statutes ; the necessity, to prevent infi- 
nite confusion and injustice, of general principles, and of in- 
struments, covenants, testaments drawn in accordance with 
them — all this is the subject of a complicated and profound 
science. There must be men to understand it ; there must 
be lawyers. Worship is a duty, religious instruction a need 
of humanity ; therefore there must be pastors, preachers, 
divines. Some persons do not see the need of this profes- 
sion, and propose to abolish it ; but the world has judged 
otherwise. There must be somebody, at least, to preside 
over the rites of public worship. Finally, statesmanship, the 
guidance of the affairs of nations, is an indispensable voca- 
tion in the order of all civilized society. And all these 
vocations, I still say, are natural ordinances of life, neces- 
sary results of the human nature and condition, bound up 
with the constitution of the world ; without which the world 
cannot exist, civilized society cannot exist. 

Let us now look at these pursuits and employments of 
men, in the next place, as the means of development and 
culture. 

The world, we say, is a school ; the object is culture. 
Let us look at it in this light. Do we imagine that some- 
thing better than the present plan might have been devised 
to answer the end ? Let us see. Suppose that to learn and 



150 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

to teach had been the sole and immediate business of human 
life. Suppose that the generations of men, housed, fed, 
clothed, provided for without any care of their own, had 
been placed, as it were, on school forms, rank behind rank ; 
and that a few, the aged and the wise, had stood before, 
them to give instruction. Would that seem to us better 
than this incessant, varied, voluntary activity ? That is to 
say, instead of finding his education in this activity, would 
he have found a more abstract system better ? 

I Avould not make any unfair representation, or draw a 
picture that does injustice to the supposition in question. 
Suppose that in any way — in families, or under the most 
attractive circumstances — direct teaching and learning were 
the sole business of life. Arid I say again, does it seem to 
us that this would be better ? Assuming that development, 
culture is the end of life, does it seem to us that having 
nothing to do but to study the works of God would have 
been the better plan % Does it seem to us a great waste of 
time, to dig and delve, to plough and sow and reap, to man- 
ufacture and buy and sell ; or to cook and wash and keep 
the house ? Should we account it a blessed fortune, if we 
had nothing to do but to read and study and meditate % 

Abstractly, perhaps, it may appear to be so, and in some 
other state of being this may be the method of culture. 
But we have now to look at this state ; and we have a large 
range of considerations to take into the account. There 
may be individuals far advanced on the path of improve- 
ment, to whom a life of study may be better suited than to 
others ; and yet the scholastic life, compared with the ac- 
tive, is questionable. But we have to consider the race, and 
the race as beginning in infancy, and as travelling up slow- 
ly on the path of progress, and little qualified even now, in 
the mass, for a life of study. Men in general would find it 
very dull to spend their time in the contemplation of facts 
or theories. They must obtain their development in some 
other way. Nature can hardly be a laboratory to them yet ; 
still less a library: it must be a workshop. The life of 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 151 

every child before us is a picture of the general life. We 
do not begin with giving it books or lessons. For four or 
five years it is left very much to its own activity — a period 
during which, nevertheless, it has been said by a celebrated 
statesman,* that we probably acquire more ideas — not mere 
knowledge, which comes partly from reasoning on ideas — 
but more ideas, more of the elements of reasoning than we 
acquire during our whole life after. 

But let us look next at the whole course of life and of 
generations, at the discipline for all men. Would study, as 
the sole business, be better than action ? 

It must be a very strong being that can afford to think 
all the time, and do nothing but think. Colleges would be- 
come madhouses, were it not for vacations. Schools of ab- 
stract speculation have often proved themselves to be wild 
enough, even when composed of the most learned men. 
The extravagances of the old school-men is proof enough of 
this. 

Perpetual thinking, at any rate, is more than anybody 
can bear. We should be cast, and flung helpless down in 
the toils of thought, if the line were never broken ; and it is 
well that event, action, circumstance, comes to break it. The 
question, indeed, is not between thought and action, but 
whether it is best that they should be blended ; and of this 
I have no doubt. 

For it is further to be considered that this mingling of 
action with thought introduces into life an element of indi- 
vidual experience, of untaught, self-taught knowledge, of 
personal experimenting, which is of immense importance 
to the character. It brings truth to the test of fact, and 
makes it more vital. It makes every attainment more 
thorough, and fixes it more deeply in the mind. Other 
things being equal, he will best understand the law who 
practises it ; or the physical constitution of man, who studies 
it with a view to healing ; or theology, who puts in order his 
thoughts to state them to others ; i. e., to preach them. 

* Lord Brougham. 



152 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

And finally, I do not see how he can be said to under- 
stand virtue at all who does not put it in practice. All the 
moral, i. e., the highest ends of life, seem absolutely to re- 
quire action in order to their accomplishment. The mere 
contemplation of virtue or of truth, however divine, is apt 
to degenerate into sickly sentiment. It is liable to become 
dreamy, inefficient and superficial. And there are too 
many examples to prove that in the upper surface of the 
character many noble, ay, and religious thoughts may have 
their place, while in the layers and depths beneath all may 
be bad and wrong. It requires action to develop the true 
moral energy. It requires that the very deeps of character 
and'life be stirred up. It requires contact and conflict with 
toil, trial, difficulty, with sickness, sorrow and pain, with all 
that makes the moral discipline of life. 

On the whole, then, I am persuaded that this discipline, 
which is found in the ordained occupations of life, is a good 
training — is the best conceivable. I do not accept as at all 
reasonable the common complaint that these occupations are 
mere drudgery to the spirit, mere waste time to the soul, 
mere toiling and moiling, mere buying and selling, mere 
writing deeds or prescriptions — with no end but to get bread. 
They do a great deal for man beyond this, in his own de- 
spite ; and they would do a great deal more if he saw what 
they were meant to do — if he but had the reflection and wis- 
dom distinctly to say with himself, " There was no need in 
the nature of things that I should be a worker ; God could 
have provided for me without that, as he has for the birds 
of the air ; but I am made a worker for the development of 
energies, for the culture of virtues. I am made a worker 
that I may be something higher, stronger, nobler, than a 
mere enjoyer, or a mere idler, or a mere learner." 

But observe now the actual process. See a man who cul- 
tivates his farm. He must work. But that is not all he has 
to do. He has to think, and to think a good deal, in order 
to do the work welh There are various soils on his farm, 
suited to various uses ; there are different products to be 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 153 

reared ; there are successive seasons, demanding attention 
and foresight ; there must be a general plan, and the details 
must be wrought out with care and judgment. So much is 
indispensable, and much more might be easily added — a 
knowledge of agricultural chemistry, a scientific cultivation 
of the land. And with this connects itself the whole circle 
of family duties and affections ; the home stands in the 
midst ; the visible guardian and presiding genius of the 
scene ; the holy altar, the sacred hearthstone that shed light 
and warmth like the sun upon all around. Such the centre 
and such the circumference of rural life — the best bond to 
virtue, and sphere of healthiest activity ; the great page of 
nature spread around and within, some thoughtful inquiry 
and some reading to understand it — what better school, 
what holier sanctuary could there be for man than this ! 

Gro now to the manufactory and the workshop. Here 
the materials which nature provides are to be wrought into 
a thousand forms, for human convenience and comfort. In- 
tellect, invention, skill, dexterity, are here brought into 
the most adroit and brilliant activity ; revolving wheels, the 
swift-flying shuttle, the sharpened instrument, best image 
the mechanic intellect of a people. No man can pass 
through our workshops and factories without being aston- 
ished at what is there achieved. This is not a dull school. 
When Heaven ordained that man should be an artisan, a 
manufacturer, it did not appoint the task to benumb his 
faculties, but to quicken and sharpen them to the keenest 
exercise. 

And again, I ask with regard to the merchant's calling — 
does Heaven frown upon that ? — as some of the satirists 
and reformers do ? Beneficent exchanger of the products 
of all climes and countries, bringer of comforts to all fire- 
sides throughout the world, promoter of peaceful inter- 
course, civilizer of the nations; whose sails whiten every 
sea ; in the bright track of whose empires, are Phoenicia and 
Carthage, and old Spain and Greece, and Holland, and Eng- 
land, and America — is this to be rated as a barren and un- 



154 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

productive calling % Is it the misfortune of the world that 
it must have this instrumentality ? " But it corrupts the 
individual " — will some one say % Only as everything cor- 
rupts him who will. Some of the noblest virtues — some of 
the noblest men in the world, are reared in this field. 

Turn, in fine, to the learned professions. These too take 
their place in the order of Providence. Let us see vihat 
place : and what functions they may be for those who dis- 
charge them. 

In this distrustful, this all-doubting age, it has fallen to 
the lot of the medical profession, I think, to be brought into 
question more than any other. The reason is, that the field 
of its investigation lies in the dark ; so that the processes of 
cure, and the principles of evidence, are more obscure ; and 
the generality of men are more incompetent to judge here, 
than anywhere else. Dr. Abercrombie, in his "Intellectual 
Philosophy," mentions the case of a physician, who retired 
in disgust from his profession, saying, that " The practice of 
medicine was like a man striking with a club in the dark ; 
if he hit the disease he killed the disease ; if he hit the 
patient, he killed the patient." Now I think that this man 
was himself striking in the dark, when he said that ; and 
not only so, but leaving all the rest of the world in the dark. 
The darker the matter is, the more need to seek for light. 
The science of healing, however imperfect, the study of con- 
stant cause and effect for thousands of years, must have some 
value; it is a good study; and for the practice of what is 
thus learned, I know not what can call out finer sympathies 
than this ministration of relief to sickness and pain, nor any 
that wins for itself a more enviable place in the confidence 
and affection of society. 

The legal profession, again, has no small amount of pre- 
judice to contend with. It cannot be denied that it is 
necessary ; somebody must understand and administer the 
laws ; and to do this requires a life devoted to it. But still 
— this enlistment in the cause of bad passions, this espousal 
and defence of the wrong side, is thought by many to be 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 155 

unprincipled. I have long wondered that some member of 
this profession, does not take up and thoroughly discuss the 
moral questions which thus press upon it. It really very 
much concerns, not only the honor of the profession, but the 
healthiness of the public conscience, that this should be 
done. In brief, the principles are these : In every legal 
question, there are two parties ; in the minds of judge and 
jury, there are two sides, which have a claim to be consid- 
ered and weighed ; counsel represent these parties, espouse 
these sides. The original party has a right to state his case ; 
then surely another, better qualified, may do it for him. 
And in all ordinary cases the lawyer does not and cannot 
Tcnow which side is wrong, till the evidence is all given in 
and the case fully argued. This is the theoretic ground for 
legal practice ; and certainly there is nothing in it that is at 
war with the great ends of Providence — nothing that forbids 
a high moral culture ; everything on the contrary that re- 
quires it. It is, rightly viewed., a high and noble vocation. 
It is the sphere of justice, the forum of eloquence, the school 
of statesmanship. 

Of the clerical profession, in the present connection, I 
need say nothing but this : it is the ultimate and culminat- 
ing ministration to the highest life of the world ; and of the 
teachers of youth — that fourth profession — that they must 
learn before they teach ; that the very condition of their 
function is intelligence, and its end, instruction ; that they, 
more than any other distinct class of men, lay the very foun- 
dations of all human culture. 

Let us now come to consider, in fine, as forms of human 
activity, the arts of expression. Nature teaches and enforces 
many things for human development and instruction ; the 
ordinary occupations of life assist the same design ; but this 
is not all. Men are possessed of great and divine ideas and 
sentiments ; and to paint them, sculpture them, build them 
in architecture, sing them in music, utter them in eloquent 
speech, write them in books, in essays, sermons, poems, 
dramas, fictions, philosophies, histories — this is an irresisti- 
ble propensity of human nature. 



156 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

Art, inspiration, power, in these forms, naturally places 
itself at the head of the human influences by which the 
world is cultivated and carried forward. The greatest thing 
in the world doubtless is a sacred life ; the greatest power, 
a pure example ; but this is the end of all, and we do not 
here contemplate it as a means. As means, art is greatest. 
A beautiful thought, a great idea, made to quicken the in- 
tellect, to touch the heart, to penetrate the life — this is the 
grandest office that can be committed to human hands. 
Every faithful artist of every grade, belongs to this magni- 
ficent Institute for the instruction of the world. 

Criticism in literature, within the last forty years, has 
passed through a very remarkable change. Any one may 
trace it in the leading journals, of that standing ; as for in- 
stance, in the Edinburgh Review. Formerly literary crit- 
icism was very much occupied with form and details in art, 
and had very little reference to the true design. Now it 
has come to be received as an unquestioned canon of crit- 
icism, that there can be no high art without moral ele- 
ments; that irreverence and atheism would kill all high 
artistic excellence, as surely as they would kill all high 
moral excellence ; that the most sublime and beautiful 
things, whether in nature or humanity, are imprints and 
signatures of the Divine hand ; and that to express these 
things, the soul of art must commune with what is divine — 
must be breathed upon by the sanctity of religion. It is 
not as it was in the days of "Voltaire and Helvetius and 
D'Holback, and Plume and Gibbon ; now it is understood 
that no man can be a great writer, a great poet, novelist, or 
philosopher, who does not recognize and feel what is greatest 
in man — the spirit of humanity and the sense of what is 
above it. I hardly know of any more significant mark upon 
the world, indicative of the world's progress, than this. 

There is one grand mistake often made in the appreci- 
ation of art, arising from the honor and fame that attend 
it. I suspect that it is quite a common notion that men 
study, write, speak, paint, build, for fame. Totally and in- 



OX THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 157 

finitely otherwise is the fact with all true men. They live 
for an idea — live to develop, embody, express it ; and all 
extraneous considerations only hinder and hurt their work. 
But this is often misunderstood. I have, many times, had 
observations made to myself, implying that the stimulants 
to my own professional effort must be small in retired 
country places, and came to their culminating point only 
in the great centres of society. The implication always 
pains, and if I must say the truth, somewhat angers me. It 
is a total misconception, to say the least. A true man will 
preach as well in the Isle of Shoals as in Boston or New 
York ; nay tetter, I am inclined to think ; for he will not 
have there the miserable envelopment of city criticism or 
eclat to disturb him. This is the reason why men seldom 
speak so well on extraordinary occasions, as when left un- 
disturbed, to the free and natural force of their minds and 
flow of their feelings, in their ordinary professional walk. 
If I were to offer an artist a million of dollars to paint me 
a picture, unless his were one of the greatest and deepest 
minds, which nothing could divert from its idea, I should 
not expect as good a picture from him as I should if he 
painted it for nothing. 

No, believe me, the effluence of genius can no more be 
bought or sold, than the light that streams from the foun- 
tain of day. It is the light of the world ; and it is not man's 
purchase, but God's gift ; it is God's light shining through 
the soul. Raphael or Michael Angelo may be employed 
by Fope Julius or Pope Sixtus — patronized by them, as the 
phrase is ; Shakspeare may be honored by Queen Elizabeth, 
or Dante protected by the Lord of Ravenna ; but all that 
pontiff, monarch, or lord can do for genius is, to let it alone, 
simply to give it an opportunity to work ; all their largesses 
can do no more than that. No, the light shines from a 
higher sphere than this world. It shines into the artist's 
studio and philosopher's laboratory ; it falls upon the still 
places of deep meditation ; the pen that writes immortal 
song, immortal thought in any form, is a rod that conveys 



158 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

the lightning from heaven to earth ; and the breath of elo- 
quent speech is an afflatus that comes from far above windy 
currents of human applause. 

It concerns my purpose in this lecture, to insist on this 
mission of all true intellectual labor, and to remind every 
worker in this field, however high or however humble, of 
his real vocation. " I am not distinguished," one may say ; 
" the world, Europe, England, does not know me — will never 
know me." "What then ? Do what thou canst. Some- 
body will know it. ~No true word or work is ever lost. 
Stand thou in thy lot ; do thy work ; for the great Being 
that framed the world assuredly meant that somebody 
should do it — that men and women of various gifts should 
do it, as they are able. Or one may say, " My part in 
this good vocation is not held by the world in due appreci- 
ation and honor ; I sing the music, or speak the dramas, 
that others have written ; and my calling is profaned in the 
common parlance of the day ; the church anathematizes it, 
and society enjoys without respecting it." I admit the in- 
justice; and for this special reason, that these callings are 
naturally good, and for the evil in them, society and the 
church are much to blame. Naturally good, I say ; for the 
world would not know or feel what Beethoven and Handel 
have composed, or Shakspeare or Calderon have written, 
if there had not been those who studied them, and, inspired 
by kindred genius, learned to breathe out their thoughts in 
song and dramatic speech. 

Why can we not look at the goodly band of human occu- 
pations and arts as it is ; and depreciate no trade that is ne- 
cessary, no art that is useful, no ministration that springs 
from the bosom of nature, and is thus clearly ordained of 
Heaven ? If there be abuses of such ministration, let them 
be remedied; but rejection and scorn of any one thing that 
God has made to be or to be done, is not lawful, nor rev- 
erent to Heaven.* 

* I have always thought, however, that this fair and reasonable appreciation 
of all the lawful and necessary vocations in society, could never be the result, but 



ON THE PKOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 159 

Let this whole system of nature and life appear as it is; 
as it stands in the great order and design of Providence. 
Let nature, let the solid world, be more than a material 
world — even the area on which a grand moral structure is to 
be built up ; itself helping the ultimate design in many ways. 
Let the works of man take their proper place — the place as- 
signed them in the plan of Heaven. Let agriculture lay the 
basis of the world-building. Let mechanism and manufac- 
ture rear and adorn the vast abode of life. Let trade and 
commerce replenish it with their treasures. Let the liberal 
and learned professions stand as stately pillars in the edifice 
of society. But when all this is done, still there are wants 
to be supplied. There is a thought in the bosom of human- 
ity that longs to be uttered. The' heart of the world would 
break, if there were no voice to give it relief — to give it ut- 
terance. There is, too, a slumber upon the world which 
needs that voice. There are dim corners and dark caverns, 
that want light. There is weariness to be cheered, and pain 
to be soothed, and the dull routine of toil to be relieved, and 
the dry, dead matter of fact to be invested with hues of 
imagination, and the mystery of life to be cleared up, and. a 
great, dread, blank destitution that needs resource and re- 
freshment — needs inspiring beauty and melody to breathe 
life into it. 

Then let the artist men come and do their work. Let 
statues stand in many a niche and recess, and pictures hang 
upon the wall, that shall fill the surrounding air with their 
sublimity and loveliness. Let essays and histories, let writ- 
ten speech and printed books, be ranged in unending al- 

of the highest and most reflective civilization. It was with surprise, therefore, 
that I read the following passage in Bossuet upon the Egyptian system of society: 
"II falloit qu'il y eiit des emplois et des personnes plus considerables, comme 
il faut qu'il y ait des yeux dans le corps. Leur eclat ne fait pas mepriser les 
pieds ni les parties les plus basses. Ainsi, parmi les Egyptiens, les pretres et les 
soldats avaient des marques d'honneur particulieres ; mais tous les metiers, 
jusqu'aux moindres, etaient en estime ; et on ne croyoit pas pouvoir sans crime 
mepriser les citoyens dont les travaux, quels qu'ils fussent, contribuoient au bien 
public." — VHistoire Universelle, troisibne partie, chapitre premier. 



160 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

coves, to pour instruction upon the world. Let poetry and 
fiction lift up the heavy curtains of sense and materialism, 
and unfold visions of beauty, like the flushes of morning, or 
of parting day behind the dark mountains. Let music wave 
its wings of light and air through the world, and sweep the 
chords that are strung in the human heart with its entran- 
cing melodies. Let lofty and commanding eloquence thun- 
der in the ears of men the words of truth and justice, 

* Or, in strains as sweet 

As angels use, . . . whisper peace. 

Let majestic philosophy touch the dark secret of life, and 
turn its bright side as a living light upon the paths of men. 

Come, other Platos and Bacons ! — do we not exclaim ? 
come, other Newtons and Laplaces !— other Beethovens 
and Handels ! — come, other Homers and Dantes, Miltons 
and Shakspeares ! — other Demostheneses and Ciceros, and 
Massillons ! — and fill the long track of future ages with 
your glorious train, and lead on the world through ever- 
brightening ages to knowledge, to virtue, and to immortal 
life! 

Under such auspices, my friends, visions of better days 
to come, rise before me. I look upon a company of people, 
a plantation, a district, or a township among us ; and, com- 
pared with a Hottentot village or the tents of Alaric, there 
is great progress now — order, comfort, and a certain amount 
of culture. But, alas ! there is destitution, ignorance, crime, 
weariness, heart-heaviness enough still. Cold and chill is 
the day of life to many within the protected pale of our 
modern civilization ; and the bright sky is of a leaden hue 
to them ; and the eyes are dim and the spirit is sad and 
heavy, that should sympathize with the fair and lovely 
picture of the world around them. God be thanked that it 
is no worse — that ours is a protected civilization, protected 
from the tortures of old superstition, and from the blows of 
feudal oppression ; ay, that it is free ; that no baron's arm 
here can strike and scatter youth and innocence into street 
dust for him to travel on to his accursed ends, nor cast 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 1£1 

down the noblest hearts to sigh in his dungeons. But there 
is uncivilized misery enough among us still; misery that 
comes from want of knowledge, refinement, culture, and the 
gracious influence of the beautiful arts and virtues. There 
are blows of domestic tyranny. There are cruel words 
spoken, fit only for barbarians. There is hard and bitter 
and grinding toil for many. There is the life-long struggle 
for culture and comfort; struggle with painful conditions 
of need, and uncongenial and ill-requited taskwork ; strug- 
gle in schoolrooms and factories and perhaps homes ; strug- 
gle in all the callings and all the liberal professions of life — 
for I hear voices of complaint from them all. Sad isolation, 
secret and untold griefs, disappointed hopes, aims, and affec- 
tions, wearying mental strifes and questionings, brood far 
and wide upon the heart of modern society. 

But I believe in a better day that is coming. Improved 
agriculture, manufacture and mechanism, less labor and 
more result, more leisure, better culture, high philosophy, 
beautiful art, inspiring music, resources that will not need 
the base appliances of sense, will come ; and with them 
truth, purity, and virtue ; reverent piety building its altar 
in all human abodes ; and the worship that is gentleness 
and disinterestedness, and holy love, hallowing all the scene ; 
and human life will go forth, amidst the beautiful earth and 
beneath the blessed heavens, in harmony with their spirit, 
in fulfilment of their high teaching and intent, and in com- 
munion with the all-surrounding light and loveliness. 

11 



LEOTUEE Yin. 

AGAINST DESPONDENCY.— HELPS AND HINDRANCES, OR A 
CONSIDERATION OF THE MORAL TRIALS OR EMER- 
GENCIES THAT ATTEND THE WORKING OUT OF OUR 
HUMAN PROBLEM. 

We are now penetrating deeper into tlie world-problem 
— the great problem of our humanity ; and we are to con- 
sider this evening some of the interior, the mental and 
moral conditions, on which it is to be wrought out. 

I have been sensible at every step that the subject upon 
which I am engaged in these lectures, requires a far larger 
discussion than I am able here to give it. It is indeed a 
subject for a great work, rather than for a few lectures ; I 
am tempted to say, for the greatest work in the domain of 
philosophy ; and for a work, too, that is yet to be written. 
My conviction is, so far as my reading has extended, that 
only a few fragments worthy of a place in it have yet ap- 
peared in the literature of the world. And it is a work 
which, when it is accomplished by the united powers of ge- 
nius, learning, and piety exhausted upon a life of study, and 
concentrated in a book of wisdom, will be of only less value 
than the Bible itself. Happy and crowned with blessings 
shall he be who can achieve it. I can but express my sense 
of the value and grandeur of the undertaking. I but see 
in future time, when thought shall be more cosmopolitan 
and comprehensive than it is now — I can but prophesy that 
then some gifted nature shall appear, which, embued and in- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 163 

formed with the German lore, penetration and spirituality, 
with the French clearness and vivacity, and the solid Eng- 
lish sense and feeling, shall so unfold the problem of human 
Destiny, as to become a second Plato — and a greater — the 
greatest uninspired teacher of men. 

Let us, however, pursue our task as we can, in these lec- 
tures, and consider this evening some of the interior con- 
ditions, trials and emergencies, which attend the working 
out of our human problem, the helps and hindrances to it as 
a practical work, and the courage and cheerfulness which 
ought to attend it, instead of the depression and despond- 
ency which too commonly darken the way. For, in par- 
ticular, I wish it to be considered whether there is anything 
arbitrary or unnecessarily distressing, or whether there is, to 
the extent usually supposed, anything peculiar or strange, 
in the conditions of human attainment. 

We are apt to imagine that there is something very 
peculiar in man's case. Probation, for instance, is thought 
to be peculiar to him. The problem of the Origin of Evil is 
commonly regarded as pertaining to humanity alone, as 
darkening no world but this. The very constitution as well 
as physical condition of human nature, is supposed to stand 
in direct contrast with that of other beings in other worlds. 
It is very easy to see how this idea arose. For, ages, the 
only beings beside men who were imagined to exist in the 
universe, were angels, seraphs — superhuman natures, dwell- 
ers in the empyrean heaven. It was not suspected that the 
surrounding worlds were inhabited. And when that con- 
ception arose, it very naturally peopled those worlds with 
the same beings, i. <?., with angels. All other beings than 
men, before supposed to exist, were angels ; therefore these 
were angels. The very contrary might have, been more 
justly inferred ; since those worlds are of the same nature, 
order, and company with our own. But the more irrational 
notion very naturally prevailed for a time ; though I think 
it is now beginning to give way to the reasonable idea, that 



164 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

those dwellers on high — dwellers on high to us, but no 
more than' we are to them — are indeed our brethren.* 

But let us now proceed to that further consideration of 
the interior and trying conditions of human culture, which 
I have proposed as the design of this lecture. 

The fundamental condition I have already discussed; 
that is to say, freedom, free will ; and the consequent liabil- 
ity to error and to evil. This fact of freedom I took for' 
granted. The necessity of it to virtue, I took for granted. I 
started from these points, as the very intuitions of expe- 
rience. I know that, under the limitations of course im- 
posed by a finite and moral nature, I am free ; and that I 
cannot be virtuous unless I am so. I know, that is to say, 
that I possess a rational and modified freedom — that I am 
free — not indeed to do everything possible — but to do and 
to ~be all that is involved in virtue and a virtuous happiness. 
I am not free to disregard motives ; but I am free to yield 
to good or bad ones at my pleasure — free to cherish the 
good and to resist the bad — free, at any rate, to turn my 
thoughts to which I will, and thus to give them weight and 
power. I am not free to be indifferent to happiness, but I 
am free to determine what kind of happiness I will seek for. 
And this freedom, it is plain, is, in its very nature, a restless 
and perilous element. A mechanical or irrational creation 
might have perfect security, and undisturbed enjoyment. 
A free creation, a virtuous, improving, advancing creation, 
must be liable to sin and pain and trouble. 

But there are other conditions — imperfection, effort and 
struggle ; penitence or regret for failure ; illusion, fluctua- 
tion, indefiniteness in the process ; and the clogs and the ob- 
structions which flesh is heir to : let us examine them. The 
question naturally arises : Is not this an unattractive way ? 
Is not imperfection undesirable; and effort toilsome; and 
penitence sad? And are not illusion, fluctuation, indefi- 
niteness, obstruction, undesirable ? And is not the path to 
good, therefore, an overshadowed and mournful path ? 

* Oersted's " Soul in Nature " has some interesting discussions upon this point. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 1(55 

Grant that it is so, to a certain extent ; yet surely it 
would be a sufficient vindication to show that it is the only 
possible path. This vindication I offer ; but I think that 
in thus considering the conditions of progress, we shall 
come to be convinced that they are not altogether dark nor 
repulsive. 

1. First, imperfection is to be considered. I should 
hardly touch upon this point, with a view to explain or de- 
fend it, so clearly inevitable is it ; but I wish to expand this 
element of the problem into its due place and proportions. 
I say imperfection. In all the ranks and orders of being, 
in the seraph as in the child, there must he imperfection. 
The grades may be different, but the thing is the same ; and 
whatever objection lies against our degree of imperfection, 
in principle lies against every other. The thing, I say, is 
alike inevitable and unobjectionable. Our grade is hu- 
man ; others may be superhuman, angelic, we know not 
what ; thrones, princedoms, principalities of heaven. Nay, 
what if it were true that they had started from infancy, as 
we do ? What supposition, indeed, so reasonable ? Is it 
not, in fact, inevitable, in some sense of the word infancy % 
We speak of imperfection ; we say that is inevitable ; must 
not the first steps of imperfection be infancy ; if not of the 
body, yet of the mind ? If every created existence had a 
beginning ; if it had nothing of experience at the first ; if 
all its knowledge and virtue were to be acquired ; if the 
highest dweller among the stars of light must remember 
the time when he began to be, began to learn, began to 
choose the right and to adore the infinite perfection, and if 
his whole being has been a progress, must not his beginning 
have been an infancy ? 

And is it not reasonable, nay, is it not inevitable to sup- 
pose that the first steps were attended with more or less of 
mistake, of erring ? What is imperfection ? It is limited 
capacity, knowledge, virtue. It implies that there are 
truths not yet seen, propositions not yet solved, points of 
light, heights of attainment not yet reached. It is so with 



166 0N THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

us ; must it not be so with the highest finite natures ? They 
may have gone far "beyond all voluntary erring ; they may 
be in this sense sinless. But in the vast breadth of their 
activity there must be things for them to try, questions for 
them to solve, as truly as in our humble daily walk there 
are for us. It must be so. If not, then they have learned 
all, and have stopped in the career of progress. A gloomy 
pause ! For if there is no progress, there can be no activ- 
ity ; if no activity, no happiness. 

2. This brings us to the second point — effort. And in 
general, I say, is it not a good condition ? Is it not a fa- 
vored, a fortunate condition ? All experience testifies that 
the highest happiness is found in action, bodily, mental, 
moral. Any of them, all of them are good. So persuaded 
am I of this, that no prospect for a month or a year seems 
to me so attractive as a plenum, a crowded fulness, of 
healthful and wise activity. And one of the highest bene- 
factions of which I can conceive, in the better world which 
we hope for, would be the privilege, the power of incessant, 
never-wearying, glorious activity — no more dulness, no 
more sleep ; no stupor of disease nor sluggishness of the 
overwrought brain ; no heavy head nor fainting heart ; but 
action, travel, growth, increasing knowledge, expanding vis- 
ions of God, amidst the bright and boundless spheres that 
roll around us. No soft, bland region do I see above, lulled 
to repose, curtained with moveless clouds, and basking be- 
neath a tranquil sky : that heaven of the Hindoo, of the 
Turk, ay, and of our Christian childhood, too, is giving 
place to manlier and maturer thoughts of ever-unfolding 
life and joy. 

But now if I substitute for effort, the word struggle, 
immediately the problem assumes a darker aspect. " I am 
weary," says one ; " I would rest ; wiry must I still fight 
this battle ? Why could I not win the prize on easier 
terms ? " I answer, What prize ? Enjoyment, pleasure, 
outward abundance % That you might have had on easier 
terms. Mountains might have been coined into gold for 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 16? 

you, and the rivers have flowed with milk and honey, and 
the trees have dropped manna and distilled wine ; and all 
this you might have had as cheap as the grass which the 
innocent sheep crops in the summer field. But the heights 
of virtue, the sweep of expanding knowledge, the pathway 
of immortal joy — with other thoughts, on other terms, are 
these things to be achieved. Is it hard to achieve them ? 
Nay, what if you were to learn that they are never to oe 
achieved as things laid up, like gold, in a secure coffer ; that 
they are never to be achieved or kept, but as they are held 
in the free and immortal grasp of beings who prize them 
above the universe beside ? Such, I believe, is the everlast- 
ing tenure by which wisdom and virtue are held. 

3. But this is not all. With wavering and wayward 
steps, stumbling and sometimes falling, we press on to the 
great end of our being — true virtue — true blessedness. Re- 
penting, regret for failure, is an essential condition of all 
true moral life. 

The keenness of this regret is really a remarkable thing 
in our moral constitution ; and nothing indeed can account 
for its sharpness but its high mission ; which is to cut the 
bonds of evil. Even in his sports, a man cannot shoot and 
miss the mark, cannot strike the ball and lose the game, 
without a gesture of disappointment and vexation. But in 
the game of life, how often and how seriously do we miss 
and fail ! Passion crosses the track, and sways us from the 
mark. The lawful senses, the innocent affections, often go too 
far ; and their erring is discovered only through experiment 
and by the result. And so it is in our social relations. 
How often does a man say, after having tried, and, it may 
be, honestly tried a thing, two or three times — some measure 
with his child, some interference with the affections of oth- 
ers, or some principle with the public — " I shall never do 
that again ! " The whole history of the world, of govern- 
ment, of society, of philanthropy, of charity to the poor 
and suffering, is but a history of experimenting ; of errors 
corrected by their consequences, of truths shaken and sifted 



168 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

from the chaff of falsehood, amidst the mighty windowings 
of social and national convulsion. 

But not to be led away from the individual reference — 
this private regret, this sorrow for erring and wrong-doing — 
what just mind will complain of it as a grievance and hard- 
ship ? "Zet me repent," such an one would say — " let me 
sorrow for my faults and follies ; it is balm to my wound ; 
God in pity has made it, not a scathing fire, but as the 
gentle dew of mercy to my nature." This emotion occu- 
pies so large a place in the actual working out of our prob- 
lem, that I must dwell upon it a moment longer ; not in- 
deed with a view to the duty — which should be urged in 
another place — but to the philosophy of the matter. A man 
thinks, for instance, that wealth will satisfy him, that sensitive 
pleasure will satisfy him, or that knowledge will fill the meas- 
ure of his capacity. He does not accurately distinguish, at 
first, between the boundaries of right and wrong ; his rea- 
son, perhaps, is not clear in its discriminations, but his pas- 
sions, alas ! are clear in their demand ; he knows what he 
wants, but he does not know what is best for him ; he 
wants this, and he wants that. Well, he gets it — the knowl- 
edge, the wealth, the pleasure, the eclat — he gets it ; he 
tries it, and he finds that it will not do. With Solomon 
and with many another seeker, he says, it is all vanity. 
Disappointed, grieved, sorrowful, he turns back ; and 
whither must he turn ? To deeper, purer, more spiritual 
resources. He finds, if he finds anything true, that noth- 
ing but virtue, sanctity, God, will satisfy him. He won- 
ders that he did not see this before ; he reproaches himself ; 
he repents. The sense of his folly is keen and bitter ; but 
it is salutary. He has learned now, by experience, the 
hatefulness of evil, and the preciousness of good ; and only 
by such experience, perhaps, could he learn. This inward 
conflict has made the only true theory of welfare, a thou- 
sand times more true to him. Now he knows what is best 
for him, and nothing can tear from him that conviction. 
To all allurements he can say, " Ah ! I know you ; I know 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 169 

where ye lead ; I know your false, accursed, blighting 
charms." Thus his repentings have been the steps of pro- 
gress. Thus his errors have taught him to cease from the 
way that causeth to err. And I cannot but think that 
a more humble and tender, a nobler and more beautiful 
virtue may come out of erring, than would have ever been 
otherwise attained. 

But besides imperfection, struggle and sorrow in the 
practical working out of the human problem, there are 
other things to be considered ; things which at first sight 
seem to be hindrances in the moral course, but which, I 
think, as man is constituted, will be found, on examination, 
to be helps and not hindrances. How talk you, it may be 
said, of a sublime destiny for man, when we see him baf- 
fled by illusions, subject to perpetual fluctuations, bewil- 
dered by a painful indefiniteness in all his moral relations, 
and chained to physical conditions full of difficulty and ob- 
struction, rather than furnished with wings to try the 
courses of a heavenly virtue ? 

4. Illusion, then — the fourth point to be considered. 

"We cannot see things as they are. We mistake form for 
substance. We mistake semblances for realities. All things 
are veiled and muffled to us, as if to keep us from the sharp- 
est contact. We live in a universe of symbols, and but 
slowly grasp the sense. It is the hardest thing in the world 
to get at the very truth — at the inmost reality ; and noth- 
ing, perhaps, more distinctly marks the progress of a mind, 
than the gradual disenchantment by which the shows of life 
dissolve — not into nothing, as they do with the idle and 
worldly — but dissolve away into the truths that lie within 
or behind them. But illusion — is it, as is commonly sup- 
posed, the antagonist of truth ? Bather it is often the en- 
velopment ; the husk that protects the corn ; the flower that 
is preparing for fruit. 

Such a flower is youthful enthusiasm. The experienced 
eye looks gravely upon it ; wisdom sits aloft and sees clearly 
its mistakes. But wisdom would not crush that flower. It 



170 ON THE PKOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

hath the beauty of its time, and will produce fruit. It is 
like the flowery style of a youthful and imaginative writer. 
" Too much efflorescence," we say ; but there is promise 
in it. 

Illusion is often a glare that dazzles and bewilders ; but 
it also draws and fixes the eye that will yet penetrate 
through it. Is it not childish and foolish in barbarous tribes, 
to be attracted as they are, by the mere gewgaws and trink- 
ets of civilization, without looking at its actual superiority ? 
But they cannot at once see that ; and in the mean time, the 
glitter and show draw them to intercourse — the only means 
of improvement. 

In a manner not very unlike this, it seems necessary that 
the whole youthful world should look with admiration upon 
the splendor and glare of life, for they cannot at once attain 
to sage and profound spirituality. They must be interested 
in something, that their faculties may be kept awake and 
active. They must have rattles in childhood ; they must 
have dresses and gayeties in youth ; they must have exclusive 
friendships and passionate regards; they must marry and 
be given in marriage, though they are hereafter to be, in 
expansive affection, as the angels of heaven. And when 
this childhood of life seems, as it does with many, to run 
into their maturity, and they live upon the outside of things 
and do not know what the things mean ; still I say, better 
to live so, than not at all ; better this action, than death : it 
may nurture strength and faculty for something higher. 
Better the school of worldliness than no school. That a man 
should not see the deep foundations of his strength and suf- 
ficiency ; that he should not feel a possession in all things, 
higher than ownership, and enjoy a use more sacred than 
mere property, is a sad thing ; but the Master of life hath 
patience with it, and will perhaps conduct it to something 
better. 

This whole tremendous illusion about wealth — I say not 
about the means of livelihood ; for that is a reasonable care 
— but about accumulation, mere accumulation, and the 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 171 

means of outward splendor, with no care for the treasure or 
the light within ; we complain of it much at this day, and 
with good reason. But I have seen a man who was edu- 
cated by the splendid things that his wealth brought around 
him ; educated by his pictures, by his furniture, by his rich 
mansion. He was not, to be sure, so much the master of 
his house, as his house was master of him ; and it taught 
him some things. The elegancies around him did some- 
thing to cultivate, polish, and refine his manners and 
thoughts. He felt that he must do something to raise him- 
self up to such a style of living. A certain consistency de- 
manded it of him ; demanded, at any rate, that his children 
should be educated for such a splendid lot. 

No error, no mistake, perhaps, is a dead mass of obstruc- 
tion in the mind ; it is often the very scaffolding of truth, 
or the shore that props up a weaker part, till a firm buttress 
can be placed beneath. Thus, to many minds, there is 
hardly any greater stumbling-block than the differences of 
faith. "So many creeds, so many religions," it is said; 
" they cannot all be true." No, nor any of them altogether 
true, perhaps ; i. e., as men modify them. But what is not 
true, may be a temporary outwork to the true. And every 
honest builder may have unconsciously constructed such as 
he needed. Ages build so ; and, I think, individual men. 
It is very plain to me that rude and dark ages could not 
have done without their superstition ; and every mind may 
be a reduced picture of those ages. But what, now, if I 
were to say, in view of the differences of faith, that I would 
not believe in anything ? It would be a startling declara- 
tion. And yet if it were even so with me — yet the error 
of such absurd and universal scepticism, might be a tempo- 
rary shield against the edge of particular errors ; infidelity 
might not harm me so much as some creeds would ; atheism 
itself might shield me for a time, from some Moloch wor- 
ship ; and thus I might be led by a way that I knew not, to 
an end that I did not think of. 

In fine, we complain of illusion ; we ask for reality ; but 



172 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

it may be that we ask for more than can be wisely given. 
Who knows whether he be able yet to grapple with the 
naked spirituality of truth ? Let reality be fully un veiled- 
all semblances dissipated, all interposing clouds swept 
away — and I know not but the world would go mad. We 
talk about the absolute in truth — seek for it. Very likely, 
success would be fatal. Yery possibly, the human mind 
could not bear it. Here is this solemn vesture of mystery 
upon us and upon all about us. Perhaps it is only so, that 
we "sit, clothed and in our right mind." Give us the 
piercing, " microscopic eye," and nature, we are told, dis- 
robed of its soft veil of beauty, would appear like a ghastly 
skeleton. And so it might be with life, if our wish could be 
indulged to pierce all its secrets and mysteries. And so, to 
see the future life — that which we so long for — might be 
more than we could bear. 

5. The thing to be next considered, is fluctuation. Is it 
an evil? Life might be stagnant without it, as the sea with- 
out its waves. 

In the whole system of things, no law seems to be more 
universal than fluctuation. I have often thought that if, 
after the manner of the most ancient philosophers, I were to 
form any generalizing theory concerning the constitution or 
the primordial element of things, it would not be water 
with Thales, nor numbers with Pythagoras ; it would not be 
the atomic nor the dynamic theory that I should adopt — not 
the theory of changing atoms nor of permanent forces, not 
the theory that makes all loose or all fast — -but the theory 
of eternal swaying to and fro — the theory of eternal fluctu- 
ation. Of the original nature, the essence of things, we 
know nothing ; but we know that all things are in a state 
of change, of conflict, of balancing to and fro. We see it in 
winds and tides, in times and seasons, in action and reaction, 
growth and decay, day and night, and the going and com- 
ing of the heavenly spheres. Nay, light itself is now found 
to be but a vibration. And when, as the sun images its 
great daily revolution in my apartment, by the light that 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTLNY. 173 

steals along the wall, I have observed how the line of light 
sways slightly, almost imperceptibly, to and fro as it ad- 
vances, it has seemed to me a silent type of the infinite mu- 
tation. 

Now that which seems to appertain to everything else, 
belongs also to the motions and moods of the human mind 
— constant fluctuation. Especially where the mind's expe- 
rience is very strong, definite, and marked, is this observa- 
ble. As the wailings over the dead in Oriental countries 
rise from time to time, so in all affliction does wave succeed 
to wave. And in states of mental anxiety and distress, I 
have often remarked it, and have been able to anticipate 
with great confidence in what state I should find such a 
mind, on any approaching interview. 

Now all this may be thought to be very discouraging — 
this swaying backward and forward, this gaining and 
losing ; but how would you have it ? One perpetual strain 
upon the faculties ; we could not bear it. One unshadowed 
vision ; it would make life monotonous. One unvarying 
state of mind ; how much that is of priceless worth would 
it cut off from our experience ? After toil, how sweet is 
rest ! After pain and danger, ease is elysium ; and safety, 
a blessed thanksgiving. Besides, in darkness and need, les- 
sons are learned that never would be learned in light and 
gladness ; lessons of humility, of conscious weakness, of 
self-despairing, Heaven-trusting prayer. That feeling which, 
from time to time, comes over us, that we are nothing and 
know nothing, how powerful a stimulus is it ! Even in lan- 
guor the mind is nursing up the strength that will soon be 
put forth in new efforts. But moral depression is often 
very different from languor — is the very reverse of languor. 
It is when most discouraged and cast down, that the mind 
is often making the most rapid progress. When the waves 
are highest, ay, and the storm is darkest, is the ship often 
sailing fastest ; and the bold voyager says, " Give me that, 
rather than everlasting calm and sunshine." "We are cra- 
dled on an ocean, whose tides are sweeping on to eternity : 



174 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

not on the bosom of a summer lake, can we be borne to 
that far, unseen, and shadowy land. 

In short, the great trouble is, that we are moral beings 
at all. If we were machines, we might be put on a smooth 
and even course. If we were animals, we might have 
walked in the way of unerring instinct. But we are moral 
beings, and imperfection, effort, regret, illusion, fluctuation, 
are our discipline. We are moral beings, and are to work 
out our own problem, under an administration of reasona- 
ble motives, inducements, fears, and hopes. 

And that we may do so, a certain indefiniteness in our 
moral relations is necessary. I have touched upon this 
topic in a former lecture ; but there are so many persons 
who halt at this point ; who do not feel as if there were any 
clear, strong, controlling moral order in this world ; who 
misunderstand this condition of progress which we call 
moral indefiniteness, that I wish to say a word or two fur- 
ther upon the subject. If — such is their feeling — if penalty 
more directly and clearly followed transgression ; if the bad 
intent never succeeded; if deceit, lying, knavery never 
prospered ; if remorse immediately followed wrong ; or if 
disease, for instance, struck the first excess with an instant 
blow, or the all-powerful hand hurled its swift thunderbolt 
upon injustice, a moral providence would be more manifest. 
And then, too, if our good endeavors were more imme- 
diately rewarded by success, the system would seem to be 
more encouraging. 

But, in the first place, let not this indefiniteness be over- 
rated. The results do follow both good and evil conduct 
very soon ; and the consequences are often more certain 
than manifest. The bad man may seem to get along very 
comfortably ; he is guilty of atrocious deeds, but he has no 
conscience, you say, no remorse ; he seems very happy for 
the time. But he is not, even for the time. There is a 
secret, dull pain, and a pitiable impoverishment in the soul, 
of which he is himself, perhaps, but half conscious. And 
then the good man is not so happy or so successful as he 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 175 

miglit be, because he is but half good. It is the misery of 
our better purposes, that they are not so thorough and de- 
cided as they ought to be. We do not know what we might 
be, if we threw away all reserves, and gave ourselves up 
wholly to rectitude and purity. 

But, in the next place, let us observe how the moral in- 
definiteness complained of, such as it is, conduces to the 
training of man. If Providence were to follow every dere- 
liction with an instant blow, the mind might be over- 
whelmed by that close-pursuing retribution. It would have 
no liberty or leisure to work out its solemn, moral problem. 
Startled by the impending peril, it would leap from side to 
side, or rush through life, as from an executioner. Or it 
would hold itself in one cowering endeavor to preserve a 
negative rectitude, rather than tempt the heights of lofty 
and perilous virtue. Something, we see, is left to man's sa- 
gacity, to his reflection, to his reasonings from experience. 
A field is opened on earth for his generosity, his fearlessness 
and freedom. Under a system as rigid and exact as the 
objector seems to demand, I do not see much place or 
chance for self-moved, noble, and disinterested virtue. 

6. But, "No," it may be said, "no, the great trouble is 
not that we are moral beings at all, but that the moral is so 
darkened, obstructed, burdened by the physical nature." 
The soul, says one, is a noble thing in itself; it has high as- 
pirations, and seems at times to have the wings of an angel ; 
but how fearfully is it chained to sense, to sensual passion, 
and to sensual infirmity ! How many a man who is striving 
to be virtuous, is thrown almost into despair at times, under 
the awful relapses of his mind into sense — which lays hold 
upon him like a lion in its strength ! And then when he 
would fight on through life, how does the darkness of sleep 
come over him, and bury him in its shadow ! When he 
should be doing his great work, and is doing it, that leaden 
sceptre is stretched over him, and he is vanquished ; nay, 
perhaps " wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep," and he 
awakes feeling as if he were a dishonored being. 



176 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

But if you will carefully examine all these matters, you 
will find, in the first place, that there is not one of the forms 
of sensation but is essential to human virtue or to human 
existence. 1 have not time to go into detail here, and in- 
deed have discussed the subject before ; but if you will ex- 
amine the appetites and passions of a man, one by one, and 
survey them in all their relations, you will find that there 
is not one that can be spared from that complex moral con- 
stitution of human life, from that whole sum of influences, 
by which humanity is trained to industry, to domestic affec- 
tion, to social order, and spiritual sanctity. 

And in the next place, how do physical need and in- 
firmity contribute to the same end ? I have said in a former 
lecture, " if I could see that eating and drinking, and sleep- 
ing and waking, are ordinances," it would clear up one large 
part of the picture of human life. "Well, I do see it. I see 
that physical wants are the first great bonds to labor, care, 
foresight, prudence. I see, too, that physical infirmities — 
weariness and sleep — have their moral uses. Sleep, for in- 
stance. For a being that often errs and fails, it is well that 
he should often begin anew ; that the chain of evil associa- 
tions should be broken ; that he should begin a new day 
and turn over a new leaf; that the pure morning influences, 
and his freshly wakened powers, should incline and enable 
him to start anew in. his moral career. I confess that I am 
glad to be sometimes delivered from myself — from my own 
thoughts, from their weariness and perplexity. I am not 
always good company enough, to wish to be always with 
myself. Let me sleep ; let me escape : as one says to an 
importunate creditor, hard to account with, " I will see you 
to-morrow." 

And then again, to evil at large, what a direct, peremp- 
tory, and powerful check, is sleep ! "What would become of 
the world if wickedness never slept ; if revenge, if intrigue, 
if guilty revelling never slept ; if tyranny, scorn, and hate 
never slept ! Thus is the activity of man for evil, bounded 
by the mighty barriers of in walling darkness and iron slum- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 1Y7 

ber. The oppressor's busy brain, teeming with mischief, 
loses its fearful energy, and for a while can devise no more 
mischief; the tyrant's arm sinks nerveless by his side, and 
is as harmless as an infant's ; brutal intemperance, which 
otherwise would destroy the man, ends in stupor and insen- 
sibility — the man sleeps, and awakes sober — sober, which 
but for God's interposition, he might never have been ; 
wickedness sleeps its awful sleep, which, however awful, is 
less so than the dread energy of its waking life. Mean- 
while the victims of oppression and wrong sleep, and forget 
for awhile the blows and burdens that are laid upon them. 

Nor is this all. It is a blessing that misery from what- 
ever cause, finds that temporary refuge. What should we 
do if sorrow never slept ; if the broken heart were never 
lulled to rest by its own moanings ? Well for us that sleep 
comes to our rescue — 

Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care, 
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, 
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course ; — 

well for us that it comes, and lays its hand upon the burden- 
ed heart and aching brow. God " giveth his beloved sleep." 
But while I have been thus discoursing on these trials 
of the human lot and heart, I can fancy some one saying to 
me — " Ah ! smoothly you discourse upon these matters, sir ! 
easily you seem to settle the points one after another ; but 
here am I, after all, weak, struggling, sorrowful : here am I, 
bewildered, tossed to and fro, and fighting a hard battle : here 
am I," perhaps one may say, " poor, ay, poor in natural abil- 
ity, poor in fortune, poor in the respect of society ; nay more, 
impoverished by my honesty, a martyr to conscience, with 
no fair chance ; depressed, forsaken, and forlorn : and yet 
you tell me that the laws of my being are wise, that Provi- 
dence is kind, that all is well. Well? — God forgive my 
thought ! — how is it well, when I am such an one, and so 
hard bested ? Oh ! why could I not have been perfectly 
innocent and perfectly happy? Fair domain of life and 
12 



178 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

light and joy ! — it is not mine ! Why, in the realm of infi- 
nite power, could not such have been appointed to me ? " 

I do not cast reproach upon the solemn and painful 
question. I do not blame the cry of human sorrow that 
asks for light : it is my own. I do not believe that it is 
displeasing to the great Being who made us, that we should 
humbly ask why His goodness has dealt thus with us. I 
cannot but believe that just as a good father on earth would 
be pleased with that fearless but modest question from his 
sensitive child, so the Infinite Parent is better pleased with 
such, question than with the usual stolid or cowering ac- 
quiescence ; and that the time will come when filial piety 
will understand this freedom. 

And I freely say, that if any needless but fatal and 
crushing weight were laid upon the world ; if any law like 
that of Mai thus on population, now sufficiently refuted — if 
any such law were to be discovered, proving that popula- 
tion must increase much faster than food, and therefore that 
famine or war, or some other catastrophe, is the irreversible 
doom of human society ; if any such crack, or flaw, or jar 
were found in the frame of the world, which was destined 
to split or break it in pieces, that then I should be dumb, 
and have nothing to answer. But I see none such ; I see 
nothing in the constitution of the world that is designed to 
ruin it; nothing that is destined, in the long run, to be pre- 
judicial to the cause of human virtue and happiness. 

It may be thought that in the complaint just now 
stated, there is one difficulty alluded to which requires at- 
tention ; that is to say, that an ascendency is given to in- 
tellect which is not fair to virtue and conscience ; that in 
the affairs of life, in the necessary business of life, honesty 
is not a match for cleverness and cunning. It is even main- 
tained by some, that trade, and also that legal practice, 
cannot be carried on with a good conscience — that, at any 
rate, an honest man cannot succeed in them, unless it be 
by some immense ascendency of talent. This I do not 
believe. If it be true, what means the maxim universally 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 179 

received, that " honesty is the best policy ? " Still I ad- 
mit that, in the action of life, a rather startling ascendency 
is given to intellect. Doubtless it is hard for one to feel 
that he lacks talent, wit, capability. But the feeling, 
however, does not prove the fact. I have often observed 
that such complainant ill makes out his case. Modesty 
certainly is no proof of inferiority. I am inclined to think, 
if you begin with idiocy and go up to the highest ge- 
nius, that self-complacency will be found to be in an in- 
verse ratio. Still, as I said before, I admit, of course, that 
there is actual inferiority, whether a man knows it or not, 
and that it tells very seriously upon the fortunes of life. 
What then ? Would you have all men made and kept 
equal ? Surely not. Would you have keener wits pre- 
cluded from gaining any, even any temporary advantage ? 
I think that, on reflection, you would say, no. I think, in- 
deed, that in a free system, it would be impossible. 

If, indeed, there were created a class of beings on earth, 
of such superiority that, by mere dint of talent or cunning, 
they swept the board clean of all life's prizes, then a stag- 
gering problem would be presented. But it is not so. Still 
you say, " The case is very hard. Conscience is a hindrance 
to success." I insist that you mistake here, on the whole. 
I say, you are mistaken. But so far as you are not, this I 
say : life was given not to gain fortunes and honors, but to 
gain a fortune within, and an honor within, of an infinitely 
nobler kind. 

7. In short, the discipline of this life involves trial and 
difficulty. Must it not — I come now to this point last — • 
must it not be essentially the discipline of all moral life ? 
Lift your eyes to the stars. Can it be essentially otherwise 
there ? I draw no unwarranted analogies. I say nothing 
about circumstances. But must not the constituent ele- 
ments of which we have spoken — freedom, imperfection, 
mistake, learning, progress — enter into all moral life ? Does 
the Bible oppose this analogy? Certainly not ; because it 
says nothing about the inhabitants of those worlds ; nothing 



180 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

of their being inhabited. "We believe that they are inhab- 
ited — but on other grounds. Millions of creatures dwell in 
a drop of water ; can those vast spheres be void ? We can- 
not believe it. But we are taught absolutely nothing about 
the condition of their inhabitants. We are left to reason 
about it as wisely as we can. They may be higher than 
we ; they may be lower ; we know nothing about it. But 
we know this ; we know that we cannot conceive of a free, 
moral nature, as learning, without some mistakes and some 
regrets. Possibly, ours may not be the lowest rank in the 
order of creation. One of the propositions of the celebrat- 
ed Erasmus, that was brought into question before the uni- 
versity of Paris, was, " that he was not sure that an angel 
was more excellent than a man." If he had said he was 
not sure that an inhabitant of Mars or Saturn was more 
excellent, i. e., of a higher order, than man, it would have 
been a pregnant doubt ; and one that would receive better 
entertainment in this age than it did in his. 

ISTow it is very obvious that the general tendency in men's 
minds, to discouragement and despondency in all their 
higher, their religious contemplations, must be immensely 
increased by this idea that they are placed in a dark, dis- 
mal, blighted world — cut off from the great fellowship of 
worlds. Under the common depreciation of this world, we 
do not see the significance, the grandeur and beauty of its 
discipline. We are impatient with many things, we are 
indifferent to more, because we do not see that our life, that 
all moral life, is meant to be everywhere and in every act, a 
moral experimenting ; and thus, that nothing is mean, noth- 
ing, is low in its intent. As we walk through the dusty 
street or the thronged mart, through the busy manufactory 
or the ploughed furrow, or amidst the homes of humble 
care or splendid opulence, we are apt to think of nothing 
but the present and pressing engagement. We do not see 
in this, a part of the great and solemn training of the worlds 
to wisdom and virtue. The true spiritual philosophy would 
dart a ray into this dusty cloud of life, which would make 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 181 

every particle of it brighter than gold. I say that there is 
not a care, nor a toil, nor a trial — not an act of business — 
not a cry of childhood nor a cut finger, nor a lost key, nor 
a threaded needle but it has its place in this training of 
imperfect creatures to prudence, wisdom, and sanctity. 

But looking at this world alone, as many do — looking 
upon it as a sad and lonely world — looking upon it as in- 
vested with a cloud of low and mean cares and trials, there 
is, in not a few minds, a prevailing dejection every way in- 
jurious and greatly to be regretted. There is dejection es- 
pecially in their religion, and naturally so. Sad and low 
and heavy beat the pulses of spiritual life, because we clo 
not feel that they throb with the great moral harmonies of 
the universe. Sorrowful is our cry for help, because it 
seems to us to be solitary and alone. As outcasts and de- 
serted, we feel as if there could be no sympathy for us in 
all the surrounding worlds. If we saw the same — as to its 
principles — the same great moral discipline in those bright 
spheres as in our own, and saw it to be the best possible, 
would it not give us courage and strength ? But why 
should it not be so ? Is not the supposition favored by all 
reasonable analogies ? 

For me, I shall venture to say, the universe is not par- 
celled out thus : here, a dark prison house ; there, a city of 
sapphire and gold ; beneath, a gulf of fire, where sink the 
groaning nations; and far around, heavenly heights, on 
whose battlements stand the shining ones ; — this universe of 
Milton's poetry is not the universe to me j but lo ! through 
worlds unnumbered and unbounded, rise the myriad ranks 
of being ; each having its own sphere ; each moral creation 
advancing ; and all holding on their sublime career, from 
knowledge to knowledge, and from glory to glory, through 
the bright, the everlasting ages. 

Such is the view of universal life — such, I mean, as I 
have given it at length in this discourse, is the view which 
commends itself to me, as the most just and reasonable, as 
most accordant with the infinite wisdom and goodness. I 



182 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

do not know how it will appear to yon, my friends, but to 
me it is an inexpressible satisfaetion. With it I can be 
resolute, I can be cheerful, I can be happy, amidst all the 
trials and difficulties of this tried life. I do not know how 
it will appear to you ; but if I have lifted one unnecessary 
cloud from the face of the world, I shall not have spoken 
in vain. 



LEOTUKE IX. 

PROBLEMS IN 31 AN' S INDIVIDUAL LIFE: PHYSICAL PAIN; 
HEREDITARY EVIL ; DEATH. 

I now wish to take up some of the vexed questions in 
the philosophy of human life and history ; some of those 
facts in the human condition, which are usually thought to 
be the most mysterious and unaccountable, the most irre- 
concilable with creative wisdom and goodness; such as 
pain, hereditary evil, death — such as polytheism and idol- 
atry, despotism, war, slavery, and the prevalence of error. 
These facts naturally divide themselves into two classes : 
those which come home to man's individual life ; and those 
which spread themselves over his social life. We have 
therefore to consider (so to speak) private problems, and 
social or historic problems. The first will occupy our at- 
tention in the present lecture ; that is to say, pain, heredi- 
tary evil, and death. 

Let us distinctly keep in mind the end which we are 
considering throughout these discussions. The end is hu- 
man culture ; not pleasure merely, not immediate enjoy 
ment, but joy of a higher kind, the ultimate strength and 
nobleness of the human character ; not an unconditional 
happiness, to be given to man as it may be given to an ani- 
mal, but the higher happiness which, by the very nature of 
it, he is obliged to work out for himself. And the question 
is : Do the conditions of our being, just referred to, promote 
the great end ? It is true that this is not the only question ; 
for we are bound to show that these conditions are either 



184 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

inevitable in the constitution of things or necessary to hu- 
man culture, and also that the severity of the means is not 
disproportioned to the value of the end. 

To proceed then — with these statements in view, — here 
is this terrible fact of pain. And I mean now physical pain. 
That which is mental we have considered in a former lec- 
ture — under the head of imperfection, struggle, penitence, 
illusion, fluctuation, moral indefiniteness, etc. And the 
pain of bereavement will naturally come under our view 
when we speak of death. The point now before us is phys- 
ical pain. And a sharp point it is. I confess for myself 
an exceeding dread of pain. Montaigne reckons it the one 
comprehensive calamity of our being — le pire accident de 
notre etre — reducing all others to that. What we fear in 
death, he says, is pain ; and in poverty, it is pain — i. e., want, 
anxiety, hunger, thirst, cold. Be this as it may, the evil, no 
doubt, is sufficiently felt. There is no need to dwell upon 
it, in the aggregate or in the detail. It is the detail indeed, 
it is the in dividual ^suffering, that presses upon us as a prob- 
lem to be solved, rather than the aggregate. The aggregate 
affects us, it is true, through sympathy, but not directly as 
pain. The illness of thousands does not make me more ill. 
Pain is a solitary thing. It does not require, like the misery 
of war, an army to produce it ; nor can an army, though 
vast as that of Xerxes, fight off from its commander, for one 
minute, the pang of a toothache. It is the sharp puncture 
of pain in my own flesh ; it is yet more, the suffering of 
years or of a life, that moves us to deep questioning. The 
first — bare pain — is the law, which we are to explain ; the 
last — in its unusual degree or continuance — is an exception 
which, it may be, we cannot explain ; unless indeed it shall 
be found to come under some one of the categories of the 
law. 

The law is that of pain ; of pain, not usually severe nor 
perpetual, but general, moderate, occasional. And the main 
question is : Is it useful ? 

Now, in general, we find no difficulty in answering this 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 135 

question in the affirmative. Pain is a sentinel that warns 
us of danger. And therefore it stands upon the outposts of 
this citadel, the body ; for pain is keenest, the surgeon's 
knife is felt keenest, on the surface. Now, be it granted, 
that pain does us some harm : but it saves us from worse 
harm. If fire did not pain, it might burn us up. If cold 
did not pain us, it might freeze us to death. If disease did 
not pain us, we might die before we knew that we were 
sick. If contacts, of all sorts, with surrounding objects — 
the woodman's axe, the carpenter's saw, the farmer's harrow 
— did not hurt us, they might cut and tear us all to pieces. 
Think of it. A knife, held by a careless hand, approaches 
us ; it touches the skin. "We start back. Why ? Because 
there is pain. But for this, it might have entered the body, 
and cut some vital organ. An old Greek verse says, " The 
gods sell us the blessings they bestow." These are the best 
terms for us. They make us careful and prudent. Uncon- 
ditional giving might lead to reckless squandering. Pain, 
then, is a teacher of prudence, of self-care. Nay, and if 
happiness alone were considered, it might be argued that an 
occasional bitter drop gives a zest to the cup of enjoyment ; 
as hunger does to the feast, or sharp cold to the winter's 
fire. But in moral relations, the argument is still stronger. 
Here is a human soul clothed with a body, to be trained to 
virtue, to self-command, to spiritual strength and nobleness. 
Would perpetual ease and pleasure, a perpetual luxury of 
sensation, best do that 1 We know that it would not. Every 
wise and thoughtful -man at least, knows that some pain, 
some sickness, some rebuke of the senses, is good for him. 
Such a man often feels, in long-continued states of ease and 
comfort, that it is time something should come to try, to 
discipline, to inure and ennoble his nature. He is afraid of 
uninterrupted enjoyment. Pain, patiently and nobly, en- 
dured, peculiarly strengthens and spiritualizes the soul. 
Heinrich Heine says, " Only the man who has known 
bodily sufferings, is truly a man" The loftiest states of 
mind, and, compared with mere sensual indulgence, the hap- 



186 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

piest, are those of courageous endurance ; and the martyr is 
often happier than the voluptuary. Cicero says, speaking 
of the sacrifice of Eegulus, and after describing his happy 
fortunes — he had carried on great wars, had been twice con- 
sul, had had triumphal honors decreed to him — " nothing 
was so great as his death " ; when, to fulfil his word, he 
went back to Carthage to suffer all that could be inflicted 
on him. " To us hearing of it," says Cicero, " it is sad ; to 
him suffering it, it was a joy, it was a pleasure ; " erat volup- 
tarius. " For," he adds, " not the light and gay in their 
jollity, nor their wantonness, nor their laughter or jesting — 
companion of dissoluteness — but the serious and resolved in 
their endurance and constancy, are happy." * This is the 
general statement to be made with regard to pain. It is 
general indeed, and does not propose to cover every case. 

But now, it may be asked, could not the same end have 
been gained, the same nobleness, the same constancy have 
been achieved, without pain ? Which is, I think, as if one 
should ask, whether the wood could not have been cut into 
shape without the axe, or the marble without the chisel, or 
the gold purified without the furnace. But let us answer ; 
and we say, not in any way that we can conceive of. First, 
it may have been absolutely inevitable in the nature of 
things, that a frame sensitive to pleasure should be liable 
to pain. This may be the explanation of that long-con- 
tinued and severe pain, which presents the hardest problem 
in our physical life. With such causes foregoing, such a 
train of influences, mental, moral, or physical, as produced 
this terrible suffering, it may have been impossible, without 
a miracle, to prevent it. Ordinarily, indeed, such pain is 
not long continued. It destroys life, or life destroys it. Si 
gravis, hrevis / si longus, levis, "if severe, brief — if long, 
light," is the old adage ; and it is true. But if it fail, and 
the terrible case of protracted anguish is before us, we may 
be obliged to leave it under some great law of the human 
constitution, which makes prevention impossible. I may be 

* De Finibus, ii. 20. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 187 

told that such pain does no good ; that it breaks down mind 
and body together ; and therefore that it cannot, in any- 
way, be useful. But we do not know that. In the great 
cycle of eternity, all may come right. How much happier 
the sufferer may be forever, for this present pain, we know 
not. All experience, all known analogies, favor the idea of 
that immense remuneration. 

The word remuneration, may startle some ; and they 
may ask, if the sufferer does not deserve all this pain ; not 
indeed, as meaning that he in particular, but that all men 
deserve as much. I answer, that it is very easy to talk 
about ill-deserving in the general and in the abstract. Do 
you think that you deserve to have a tooth extracted or a 
finger chopped off every day — or any pain as great as that, 
every day, for ten years in succession ? But there are suf- 
ferers who endure far more than that amount of pain daily. 
Some pains are doubtless punitive ; such, for instance, as fol- 
low sensual excess or gross negligence ; that is very plain. 
Authors of a certain religious school — like McCosh on the 
Method of the Divine Government — sometimes write as if 
they had found out a great secret, unknown to philosophy, 
when they discover that pain is punitive ; that the world is 
wicked, and needs and deserves chastisement. This, how- 
ever, is no mystery, nor matter of doubt. But it will not do 
to bring all pain under this category ; to resort, with Leib- 
nitz, to the " evil of sin " as the sole " reason for the evil of 
pain." Some pain in a sensitive organization, and sometimes 
great pain, may be* inevitable. If it is not, let some one 
answer me this question : why do animals suffer ? They 
have not sinned. 

But, secondly, if pain be not absolutely inevitable, it is 
relatively inevitable ; it is necessary, that is to say, to the 
intellectual and moral training of humanity. 

To see this, it is necessary to observe two things. One 
is, that every physical organism as it befits a higher nature 
is endowed with a more susceptible nervous constitution. 
We see this gradation in fishes, bugs, birds, and quadrupeds. 



188 ON THE PROBLEM OP HUMAN DESTINY. 

In man the highest point is attained. He is clothed all 
over with a network of nervous tissues. These minister to a 
higher than animal culture. Do you wish that your watch 
was a stone, that it might not get out of order ? To escape 
neuralgia, would you be a fish or an ostrich ? 

The other thing to be noted is, that for moral purposes, 
this exposure to pain is still more manifestly inevitable. It 
is a less evil, preferred to a greater ; one of which is unavoida- 
ble. It is only necessary to state the case, to see the con- 
clusion. Give a finite and free nature ; give a body for its 
training; fill that body with perpetual enjoyment; let no 
amount of negligence or recklessness hurt it ; let no excess, 
no intemperance nor debauchery, no indulgence, bring re- 
tributive and disciplinary suffering into it ; and the ruin of 
this being would be as certain as his existence. Is there 
too much of this restraint and counteraction in the world ? 
We know there is not. I may struggle against this conclu- 
sion ; but I do not see how I can get rid of it. I would 
have man moral and free, and I cannot have him infinite ; I 
would have him win the prize of immortal virtue ; I would 
have the hostile tendencies of his ignorance and wilfulness 
checked, controlled : I see that pain is such a restraint; I 
must confess it to be good. 

]STor does the immortal prize cost too dear. We are in 
an unfair situation for the argument now. We are in the 
midst of the discipline, and have not yet experienced the 
full result. We are in the battle, and have not won the 
day. But if ever the day come when we shall rise to the 
height of the immortal victory, well shall we know that it 
is worth all that it costs ; ay, and infinitely more. Nay, 
many feel that now, and bless their adversity as a greater 
benefactor to them, than ever was their prosperity. 

But let us come to that form of evil — be it suffering, 
sickness, mental disease, or unhappy temperament — that is 
hereditary. This, it may be thought, is far harder to ac- 
count for. It may be said that it is an injustice; "the 
fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 189 

set on edge." Is not- that hard ? And can it be expected 
to be useful? No; not if all pain must be regarded as 
punitive, in order to be profitable ; for this plainly is not. 
But suppose that in the best possible system of things, the 
best for all, the best for the sufferer, this pain, this thread 
of suffering in the great and useful bond of hereditary trans- 
mission, is a thing that could not be extricated, without tear- 
ing the system all to pieces ; would not that alter the case ? 
And what, after all, is there that is so peculiar or strange in 
the case ? An incendiary sets lire to the city, and my house 
is burned. A flood pours down the valley, and sweeps away 
my mill. In either case, I am an innocent sufferer. What 
then ? Would I destroy the quality of fire, or stop the spring 
freshet ? I belong to a general system. If everything in it 
conspired for my benefit, it would not be general. It is im- 
possible that general laws, those, for instance, of heat, cold, 
wind, rain, should work no inconvenience nor ill to any- 
body. I want rain when my neighbor wants the sun. I 
want a wind when he wants a calm. The law that is good 
for all, must expose some to harm. Why should exemption 
be demanded from the law of hereditary transmission — pro- 
vided it be a good law ? What harm or wrong does it, more 
than any other general law \ 

But now consider, that it is, in fact, a law of immense util- 
ity. First, it lies, I think, at the foundation of nationality. 
What is it that makes the Frenchman so different from the 
Italian or German, or Englishman ? It is not climate ; it is 
not situation alone ; it is not the train of historic events. 
Back and beyond all these, we must go to something in the 
blood, in the temperament, that makes a Frenchman a 
Frenchman ; something which is propagated from age to 
age ; and which thus creates those separate schools of cul- 
ture, called nations. It is well that they are separate ; 
that they have separate governments, institutions, litera- 
ture ; that they should be working out experiments by 
themselves, free from foreign influences, sentiments, vices ; 
experiments which may ultimately inure to the benefit of 



190 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

the whole. This may be the final cause of the difference 
of languages — to keep people separate. I am sure I am 
glad that the French literature cannot pour its unobstructed 
tide into the channels of common reading in this country. 
The better things — science, philosophy, do come, through 
the investigations of learned men; the worse things, the 
dregs of popular literature, are mainly kept out. 

Next to the bond of nationality, and stronger, and more 
necessary and useful, is the family bond ; and this, I think, 
is created by the law of hereditary transmission. I say, not 
the family, but the family ~bond — that mysterious affinity, 
which is involved in the relation of kindred. I shall have 
occasion in another connection to speak of the descent of 
property, and may fairly add the weight of that considera- 
tion to what I am now saying ; but I speak now of the de- 
scent of character ; of that congruity, that sympathy, that 
union, that oneness, which is made by affinity. It is a 
bond, not only of indescribable interest, but of incalculable 
utility ; the very heart's hold in this world, upon unpur- 
chased affection, assured confidence, comfort, and happiness. 
The words parent, child, brother, sister — there are no words 
like these. And even if the word friend, is a higher and 
more awful word, yet to how few, in its highest sense, can it 
be applied ! There doubtless are some persons, of singu- 
larly attractive and attaching natures, or of certain cosmo- 
politan habitudes, who can do better than others, without 
the family bond. But how many, amidst the coldness and 
indifference of the world, would wander through life in sad 
isolation, feeling that they had none to care for them, if they 
could not return and lean upon the bosom of domestic affec- 
tion ! Amidst the wide-flowing fibres of human feeling, amidst 
the wilfulness and recklessness of men's passions and regards, 
are set these fast knots, these ties of kindred, to hold the 
social world together ; nay, and they link together family 
after family in succession, and thus become the binding ties 
of generation to generation, and of age to age. 

!Now I suppose it is obvious, that if anything is heredi- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 191 

taiy ; if influence, temperament, character, the very life- 
blood, flows down from sire to son ; if good or bad name 
descends, then some evil must pass on along with the good. 
The one cannot be separated from the other. Kay, and ob- 
serve that the general influence of all this must be good. 
The very thought of this transmission must be salutary. 
What a premium upon good conduct is it, and what a tre- 
mendous admonition to bad conduct! Many a tempted 
man has been startled and struck to the heart with that 
thought — that his children may inherit his passions, his 
vices, his diseases. Nature within us, keeps a stricter ac- 
count with us than we think. It expects us to do right ; 
and so exquisitely is everything adjusted within us and 
around us, that we can never do wrong with impunity. 
In all these awful depths of humanity and life, there is no 
hiding place where evil can be buried forever. It may be 
cloaked in secrecy or decency all our lives, and yet break 
out in misleading and misery to our children, and to our 
children's children ; ay, " unto the third and fourth gen- 
eration." 

But the subject to which I intended to devote the prin- 
cipal part of this lecture, is the end of earthly pains and of 
the human generations — the solemn departure from this life. 

Three great facts, says the Italian Yico, are everywhere 
found, embedded in the foundations of human society: 
" worship, marriage and burial." Among all nations, in all 
ages, exist these solemn usages ; and without them, human 
society could not exist. They are not mere facts, and uni- 
versal facts ; but their significance is manifest ; they are 
essential ministrations to the moral culture of the human 
race. 

The rites of sepulture are as peculiar to man as those of 
worship or marriage. Man is the only being on earth that 
buries his dead. This usage is the expression of a senti- 
ment, far beyond the reach of animal instinct. It is not 
mere convenience that suggests the practice. It is a senti- 
ment; it is a sense of fitness; it is a dictate of respect for 



192 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

the venerable form of humanity ; it is to garner up its sacred 
dust as reverently as if it were laid in a royal mausoleum, 
where, 

" Nor steel, nor poison, 
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, 
Can touch it further." 

Man marks as holy the spot where he lays down the frame 
of the spirit's life to its " dread repose ; " and over those 
holy remains he builds the sepulchre, the tomb, the pyra- 
mid. He builds them as monuments of veneration and 
affection ; as testimonials to the solemn import of death, and 
to the hope of immortality. 

It is in this light that I am now to contemplate death ; 
not as a bare fact, not as the simple ceasing of life — for ani- 
mals too die — but as clothed with moral sentiments, and as 
ministering to the moral improvement of mankind. 

By the unreflecting mass of men, death is regarded sim- 
ply as the greatest of evils. They survey its ravages with 
dread and horror. They see no beneficent agencies in the 
appointment ; they scarcely see it as an appointment at all. 
The behold its approach to their own dwelling, not in the 
spirit of calm philosophy or resignation, but simply with a 
desire to resist its entrance. To " deliver those who all 
their lifetime are in bondage through fear of death," was 
one express design of Christianity ; but only in a few minds 
has this design been fulfilled. Death is still regarded, not 
as an ordinance, but as a catastrophe. It is like the earth- 
quake to the material world ; that which whelms all. It is 
the one calamity; that which strikes a deeper shaft into 
the world than any other. It is the fixed doom, which 
makes all other calamity light and phenomenal. The world 
trembles at it, grows pale before it, as it trembles and grows 
pale before nothing else. Nay, and with reflecting persons, 
I think, the feeling that they must die, is usually the feel- 
ing as of some stern necessity. " Now let me depart : it is 
good for me to go hence," is a language sometimes heard ; 
but it is rare. That dark 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 193 

view, there forever suspended, casts a shade over the whole 
of life. 

Can it have been meant, is it reasonable, that an event 
so necessary, so universal, and appointed doubtless in wis- 
dom and goodness, should be thus regarded ? For death, it 
is evident, in fact, if not in form, is a part of the original 
world-plan. I know that it is commonly looked upon as 
the consequence of sin, the consequence of the fall. But 
observe the language in which this doom, supposed to be 
consequent upon the fall of man, is pronounced. It is in 
the third chapter of Genesis. It is a doom, in general, of toil 
and pain and sorrow ; and when death is mentioned, it is in 
these terms : " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, 
till thou return unto the ground ; for out of it wast thou 
taken ; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." 
" Till thou return to the ground/' This then is represented 
as a part of the already appointed ordination of nature. 
" For out of it wast thou taken." The reason assigned 
has no reference to the fall, but to the constitution of human 
nature. " For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou re- 
turn." That is, thou shalt die, for thou art naturally mor- 
tal ; earth has part in thee, and shall reclaim her own. 

I have no wish to strain this language to the support of 
any theory ; and perhaps it does imply that if Adam had 
stood in innocence, the doom, or rather the present form of 
that doom, might have been averted ; but then it certainly 
does imply also that it was the natural consequence of the 
human conformation. Saint Paul indeed says, that " death 
came into the world by sin; " but he may mean, death fig- 
uratively, i. e., misery ; as where he says, " the command- 
ment which was ordained to life, I found to be to death, i. e., 
to misery, to despair. Some able commentators have been 
of this opinion.* But whether it be so or not, is not mate- 
rial to the view I take ; which is this — that there is a wide 
distinction to be made between death, as a gloomy, fearful, 
distressful event, and simple departure from this life. " That 

* See Koppe on Romans v. 12. 
13 



194 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

death," says Jeremy Taylor, "which. God threatened to 
Adam, and which passed upon his posterity, is not the going 
out of this world, but the manner of going." Grant, then, 
that death as a mode of departure were the consequence of 
sin, yet the simple exit from this life, the return of the body 
to the dust, is evidently a part of the original plan. It be- 
longs to the constitution of man and of the world. 

Dissolution, death, is that to which the human body 
tends by its essential constitution. It is as much in the nat- 
ural course of things as childhood, youth, manhood, age. 
The earth too was evidently made for transition, not for per- 
manent abode to its inhabitants. If successive generations 
enter it, generations in succession must leave it. Its sup- 
plies of food are limited. Its accumulating generations 
could not even stand upon it. One therefore must give 
place to another. If not, there would have been no place 
for us, at any rate ; we should not have been here to discuss 
the matter, anyway. 

All this is but saying that each generation must die. In 
this sense, therefore, death was a part of the original plan ; 
the departure from this world, that is to say, was a part of 
it ; even as that most ancient, Scripture record of it implies. 
But still, doubtless, this departure may have assumed a par- 
ticular character in consequence of sin. It may be, I repeat, 
a death, dark and fearful— distressful both to body and 
mind. Yice, for instance, brings on disease ; and disease 
produces death : and this death, thus premature and agoniz- 
ing, is the fruit of sin. And doubtless in many ways and in 
every way, departure from this world must be a more afflic- 
tive event, both to the sufferer and to survivors, in conse- 
quence of our moral darkness, wandering, and weakness. 

Nevertheless — for I must insist upon this point — the de- 
parture, in some way, is inevitable. The over-crowded 
dwelling must dismiss some of its inmates ; the over-popu- 
lous nation must send out colonies. Thus must the world, 
so to speak, colonize its inhabitants, translate them to 
another country. Else death would come amidst horrors 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 195 

now unknown ; amidst the agonies of famine and the suffo- 
cation of fulness. 

I do not know whether I succeed in the attempt ; but I 
wish to impress upon your minds the conviction, that man's 
life on earth could not have been meant to be immortal ; 
that death, considered as a simple exit from this world, 
must have been as certainly a part of the original plan, as 
birth ; that, if the system of the world is capable of defence, 
this inevitable part of it must be ; in fine, that if God is 
good, this ordination must be a good, and not an evil. For, 
so long as this natural and wise limitation of the period of 
life is looked upon as an unnatural and dreadful catastro- 
phe — as wreck and ruin to the genuine, all-comprehending 
order of nature, and not a legitimate and beneficent part of 
it — it is in vain that we speak of it, and urge the grounds 
for placing it among the wise and good ordinances of our 
being. 

Let us now consider this event, first, in its circumstan- 
ces, and then, in its direct ministration to the great ends of 
our being. The circumstances to which I refer are the iso- 
lation that attends it, and the disease and suffering that 
usually conduct to it ; and the question may arise — why 
these arrangements, so full of pain and affliction ? 

First, the event is isolated. " Alas ! " one may say, 
" earth does not colonize its inhabitants ; it does not dismiss 
them in tribes and families ; then were we spared the sor- 
rows of bereavement ; one by one men depart for the spirit 
land." But let us see how important this arrangement is, 
not only to human culture, but to the general intent and 
economy of the human condition. What would become of 
the cultivation of the earth, where would be the transmit- 
ted fruits of experience, and in what state would be the 
whole training of the human race, if men departed for the 
other life in companies, in families ? Take away that one 
bond from the world — inheritance, inheritance of property 
and experience ; and the world could not stand in its pre- 
sent order ; it would fall to pieces. \Houses, estates would 



196 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

decay, if none, neither friends nor children, none for whom 
we had any regard, were to take them from our hands ; all 
forecast, prudence, industry would die out of the world ; 
like the animal tribes, each generation would have to take 
up the lesson anew. It is only upon the plan of single, iso- 
lated departures from the world, that its instruction can be 
kept up, or its progress carried forward. If nations, gen- 
erations died off at once, all the labors of humanity would 
only weave its winding sheet. But now, throughout the 
mighty frame of society, unnumbered hands sink from the 
loom at every moment, and unnumbered new ones rise, to 
ply the great task ; and thus is woven the unbroken web of 
ever-progressive human fortunes. 

Next, let us consider the illness that is usually the precur- 
sor of death. Why, it may be said, the pains of mortal dis- 
ease ? Why so much suffering that is apparently useless, 
i. e., morally useless? I might answer, holding to the strict 
coherence and continuity of the present and future life, that 
it is no more useless than any disciplinary pain. But I am 
looking now only at the general economy of the human con- 
dition ; the advantage or disadvantage for this life. And 
in this view, it may be assumed, without regard to the moral 
issue, that it is desirable, almost necessary, that men should 
have some premonition of their departure from this world ; 
that they should not drop instantly from the scene. They 
wish to give directions and make arrangements for the 
future. Endless difficulty and confusion would arise with 
regard to property, to trusts, to important matters involv- 
ing the welfare and comfort of survivors, without this final 
disposition. And then with regard to the pain of a last ill- 
ness, simply considered ; suppose the premonition were to 
be distinctly given in some other way, and long enough 
previous to the event ; suppose there were something in the 
human system that gave the note of preparation, like the 
clock before it strikes the hour : does not the illness that 
slowly breaks the tie to life and makes the sufferer willing, 
and perhaps desirous to depart, cause less pain than would 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 197 

be felt in one week passed in health, under the doom of that 
fearful certainty % For one, in the midst of health and en- 
joyment, in the fresh and vivid sense of what life is, and of 
all its ties, to be told that he shall die next Monday ; what 
a dread interval would it be — at least to most men ! I can- 
not doubt that the present mode of our dismission from life 
is more merciful than that would be. u ~No escape ! " says 
Egmont in Goethe's drama — (he was doomed to the scaffold 
by the cruel Duke of Alva) — " no escape ! Sweet life ! beau- 
tiful, kindly wont of being and action ! — from thee shall I 
part — so quietly part ? .Not in the tumult of battle, nor 
amidst the noise of arms, dost thou give thy swift farewell ; 
thou takest no hasty leave — cuttest not short the moment 
of parting. I shall take thy hand — look yet awhile into 
thine eyes — feel all lovingly thy beauty, thy preciousness — 
then tear myself away — and say, farewell ! " More merci- 
ful, I repeat, than this, is God's ordinance of sickness and 
pain as the pathway to the grave. 

I will venture to add that death sometimes brings spe- 
cific relief — from evils for which there is no other remedy ; 
from sickness and pain which nothing else can end ; from 
painful relations, from mental difficulties, from embarrassing 
crises in life, of which nothing else can break the knot, the 
bondage and sorrow. It is not always hard to die. There 
are those, and more of them perhaps than we think, who 
desire to die. I have looked upon those, in sad relations to 
one another, or to the world, of whom I have said, " Noth- 
ing that I see but death can help you." And there are per- 
sons, involved in such moral emergencies — so desperate and 
irremediable — that they are fain to say, " Let me die ; let 
death deliver me ; I would begin anew ; I would try again." 
There may be more of them, I repeat, than we think. 

t But let us now proceed to the main and final question — 
the moral question, to be examined : whether the highest cul- 
ture, the safety and happiness of this life, do not make the 
appointed departure from it, however naturally unwelcome, 
actually necessary, and even desirable. In this view, I am 



198 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

to speak of death, not merely as the end of this life, but as 
the passage to another. 

The learned Bishop "Warbnrton, assuming, thongh, as I 
think, erroneously assuming, that the Hebrews had no 
knowledge of a future life, has gone into a very elaborate 
argument to show that Moses must have had a divine Le- 
gation, attested by miracles. For he maintained that with- 
out the expectation of future rewards and punishments, 
nothing hut a special and miraculous interposition could 
hold a people in the bonds of moral order. Doubtless the 
argument is just, whatever may be thought of the premises. 
What could keep in any bounds the swellings of ambition, 
pride, cruelty, luxury, and licentiousness, did not death 
interpose its dread barrier ? It is commonly called " the 
king of terrors ; " as if in that character it were to be depre- 
cated. But its terrors are for those who most need them. 
And well is it, that that shadowy king stands in the path, 
and says to self-indulgence, " remember ! " and to oppres- 
sion, " beware ! " — else were not the earth habitable. 

But I wish to speak of this event in its widest relations 
to human improvement ; not merely as a terror, but as every 
way a wisely appointed and good discipline. 

Death is an epoch in our moral course. A youth at 
school is far more likely to be affected by the prospect of an 
approaching examination, than by his general responsibility. 
Then he is to answer for himself. ' Then his learning is to 
be brought to the test. Then his fidelity or neglect is dis- 
tinctly to appear. Such is the coming hour of death to the 
moral learner. It brings the sense of obligation to a point, 
from which there is no escape. It brings the great moral 
trial of life to a solemn issue. Doubtless there is a higher 
thought, a larger view, for the manhood of reason ; but in 
this respect, most men are yet children, and need the dis- 
cipline of children. Doubtless the moment that lies in the 
distance of a thousand years, is to answer for the moment 
that is now passing ; the whole vast future is bound to the 
present hour, by the indissoluble chain of cause and effect ; 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 199 

but for creatures of our limited capacity, that prospect is 
too general ; and it seems expedient that there should be 
distinct steps in our progress ; that manhood, for instance, 
should distinctly answer for youth, and age for manhood ; 
and in like manner, the immediate future life, for the life 
that now is. 

Again, the nearness of the event has its purpose. If any 
one should ask why the allotted term of man's existence on 
earth should be so brief, I still answer, that I see in this a 
wise ordination. The advancement of the world depends 
on the earlier vigor and flexibility of life. I say not upon 
young men and women — for that seems to me one of the 
follies of our time — but upon the age between twenty-five 
and sixty-five. After that, opinions usually become settled, 
habits fixed ; and the world may not look for new ideas, in- 
novating enterprises, nor the enthusiasm to prosecute them. 
Inventions, reforms are seldom to be seen in old age. Age 
has indeed its part to act ; to guide the zeal and restrain the 
rashness of the young. Its experience and wisdom are to 
be respected ; far more, I think, than they are at this day ; 
but old men, generally, are not the working men of the 
world. "What then is the ordinance that is to meet this con- 
dition of humanity ? The scythe of death mows down the 
generations, that it may provide for a more vigorous growth. 
The axe, that " is laid at the root," cuts away the aged trees, 
that younger and fairer ones may shoot up in their stead. 
The builder removes fixtures, that he may prepare for im- 
provements. Thus the world is continually recruited with 
fresh strength, and is pervaded with an imaginative and 
flexible enterprise ; and thus its arts are advanced ; its fields 
are cultivated with increasing skill ; its houses are built on 
improved plans; its science and literature are constantly 
rising; and its religious systems are advancing to higher 
truths and wider ranges of vision. Death, then, grim and 
fearful as it is accounted, is, like decay in nature, the con- 
stant improver, enricher, and beautifier of the world. 

Yet further, the inevitableness of the coming change is 



200 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

a weighty element of its moral power. The certainty of it ; 
the feeling that nothing can stay the event ; that no hoard 
of gold, nor crown of honor, nor crowd of cares, nor press- 
ure of engagements, nor thronging visions of coming pros- 
perity, nor momentous crisis in affairs, can ward off the in- 
evitable hour — how does that feeling penetrate through the 
whole of life, and sober, at times, the wildest levity, . and 
subdue the haughtiest ambition ! The Grecian Epaminon- 
das, when told that a distinguished general had died while 
the battle was raging, exclaimed, " Ye gods ! how can a 
man find time to die, at a moment like this ! " But every 
man must find time to die ! Ay, the man of blood, whose 
ruthless sword has cut down its thousands and ten thou- 
sands ; who was deaf to the groans and pleadings of human 
misery; who has crushed ten thousand human hearts be- 
neath his blood-stained car — Tamerlane or Alaric, Csesar or 
Napoleon — he has, in God's dread forbearance, found a time 
to kill ; but he has also, in God's awful justice, found a time 
to die ! And the private man, the man who dwells in the 
deepest seclusion ; who lives hidden and shrouded from the 
public eye ; who draws the veil of midnight around his 
deeds ; that man still feels that an eye is upon him ; he is 
obliged to confront the awful image of death ; he cannot 
escape. " But I must die ! " is a thought that steals upon 
many a worldly dream, and many a silent rumination. He 
feels it, though no solemn message, as in the Egyptian feasts, 
take up the admonition and say, " Bemember ! thou must 
die ! " 

Yet not with terror only, but' with tenderness does death 
touch the human heart — touches it with a gracious sympa- 
thy and sorrow. One may know the house, where death 
has set his mark, long after the time. Traces are left in 
its affections, that are never worn out. Traces are left in 
memoriam, in poetry, in all human sentiment. Death is 
not the sundering, but the consecration of friendship. It 
strengthens that holy bond. It makes the departed dearer. 
It gives new power and sanctity to their example. It in- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 201 

vests their virtues with the radiance of angel beauty. It 
canonizes them as patron saints and guardian angels of the 
household. 

Nor could it fulfil its high mission, if men departed from 
the world in families, in tribes, in generations. Then in- 
deed were we spared the sorrows of bereavement ; but at 
the expense of much that is most sacred in life. If families 
were dismissed from life together, they would inevitably 
become selfish ; contracting their thoughts and affections 
within those domestic spheres, in which all their destinies 
were bound up. If generations were mowed down at once, 
like the ripened harvests, then had there been no history of 
public deeds nor record of private worth. The invisible 
presence of virtue that now pervades and hallows the earth, 
that consecrates our dwellings, and makes them far more 
than the abodes of life, would be withdrawn from the fel- 
lowship of men ; and the signal lights of heroic example 
that are now shining through the ages, would all go out in 
utter darkness. A working-day world, a utilitarian world, 
we should have ; shut up to the cares and interests of the 
generation that is passing over it ; not as now a world that 
is overspread with the mounds of departed nations, with the 
dust of buried empire — the theatre of majestic history, the 
heritage of genius, the altar of holy martyrdom. The earth 
is no longer the mere material globe that, at the beginning, 
rolled round its parent sun : it is the tomb of generations, 
the monument of ages. From out of its hollow recesses and 
echoing caverns, what oracles come! Upon its majestic 
brow, what names are written — Assyria, Egypt, Phoenicia, 
Greece, Rome ; the Goth, the Gaul, the Saxon, the Slavonic 
race, and races of the old, the dateless American time ! 
The very dwellings, the cities of the world have become 
monumental. Not present convenience, not bustling activ- 
ity alone, but the sanctity of death makes them what they 
are. Their walls have echoed to joys and sorrows that have 
passed away. High, heroic hearts have throbbed within 
them, that beat no more ; pain and patience have built 



202 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

altars in them, to lowly resignation and prayer ; the last 
sigh has ascended from them, and, as holy incense, conse- 
crated them for ever. Oh ! not the present alone is here ; 
but the image of the majestic past stalks through the world, 
and casts its solemn mantle over the life of to-day. We 
live, that we may garner up the treasures of humanity, and, 
adding to them the little that we can, transmit them to 
those that come after. We survive, with whatever pain to 
ourselves, that virtue may not die. We guard the holy be- 
quest. See we to it, that it waste not, nor dwindle in our 
hands ! 

Nay, in another respect, the grandeur of death imparts 
a reflected dignity to life. God puts honor on the being to 
whom He says, " Thou shalt die ! " — to whom lie does not 
veil the event, as He does to animal natures, but unfolds the 
clear prospect. He, to whom the grandest achievement of 
courage and heroism should be proposed, could not be a 
mean creature. But every man is to meet the grandeur of 
death. In these mortal lists he stands — ay, the youth, the 
child, the frailest spirit that ever was clothed with the 
habiliments of mortality ; and he knows that he is to meet 
a crisis more sublime and mysterious than any other, that 
ever challenged mortal courage. The meanest man lives 
with that prospect before him. More than that which makes 
heroism sublime, it is his to encounter. 

Yes, and in the bosom of death are powers greater than 
itself. I have seen them ; I have seen them triumph, when 
death was nearest and mightiest ; and I believe in them — I 
believe in those inborn powers of life and immortality, more 
than I believe in death. They will bear me up more than 
death will weigh me down. I live ; and this living, con- 
scious being which I am to-day, is a greater wonder to me 
than it is that I should go on and on. How I came to he, 
astonishes me far more, than how I should continue to be. 
And if I am to continue, if I am to live for ever, I must 
have a realm fitted for such life. Eternity of being must 
have infinitude of space for its range. I would visit other 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 203 

worlds ; and especially does the desire grow intenser, as the 
boundless splendors of the starry heavens are unfolded wider 
and wider. But I cannot go to them — I cannot skirt the 
coasts of Sirius and the Pleiades, with this lody. Then — 
some time — in God's good time — let it drop. Let my spirit 
wander free. Let this body drop ; as when one leaves the 
vehicle that had borne him on a journey — to ascend some 
lofty mountain — to lift his gaze to wider heavens and a 
vaster horizon. So let my spirit wander free — and far. Let 
it wander through the realm of infinite good ; its range as 
unconfined as its nature ; its faith, the faith of Christ ; its 
hope, a hope full of immortality ! 



LECTURE X. 

HISTORIC PR OBLEMS : P OL YTHEI8M— DE8P OTISM — WAR- 
SLAVERY— THE PREVALENCE AND MINISTRY OF ER- 
ROR, IN THE SYSTEM OF THE WORLD. 

I must now take up the great social problems to which 
I referred in my last lecture — Polytheism, Despotism, War, 
Slavery, and that problem which embraces them all : the 
Prevalence and Ministry of Error. 

" A grim and fearful host of ills," it may be said, " to pre- 
side over the destiny of the human race ; or if not to preside, 
to prevail — to have darkened the world with fear, to have 
bound it in chains, to have torn it with violence, from the 
beginning ; to have led the generations of men in mazes of 
darkness and wandering through all ages! How can such 
things have been ordained, or permitted ? How in any way 
could such things have been the agencies of a good and wise 
Providence?" 

Now, in dealing with these questions, we must take along 
with us what has been already said upon the very grounds 
and principles of the human problem. Man, as a moral be- 
ing, must of necessity be free ; as a created being, he must 
be imperfect and ignorant ; as a being whose destiny it is to 
improve, he must begin somewhere; nay, as a being, all 
whose knowledge and virtue are to be acquired, he must be- 
gin at a point where he has no virtue or knowledge ; i. e., he 
must begin in infancy. Look, then, at this being, and con- 
sider what must be the inevitable laws of his development, 
and what the probable course of it. Do not ask why this or 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 205 

that could not have been hindered ; but see that the principle 
of hindrance would be fatal to the system ; that the demand 
for divine interference made by millions, irretrievably com- 
plicates, and, if listened to, ruins all. See man, then, as he is 
and must be. Imperfect, ignorant, infantile — yet endowed 
with powerful energies and impulses, without which he would 
be nothing — he is placed upon the earth to do what he pleases. 
Deprive him of the liberty to do so, and you unmake the 
man. Deprive him of his imperfection, his ignorance, his 
exposure to error, and you make him God. Or yet once 
more: interfere with his free development, by incessant mir- 
acles to ward off the evils into which he falls, and you break 
up the whole regular training on which that development 
depends. Take the case of any evil, any wrong, any misery 
that ever was inflicted, and consider it. The assassin's arm is 
raised to murder. Almighty power could arrest it ; but then 
the agent would not be free. Two armies are about to rush 
into battle. Almighty power could in an instant chain these 
hosts like statues to the earth ; but then they would not be 
free — would not be men. 

I must desire you further to take it into the account, not 
only that some evils were likely to flow from such a consti- 
tution of things, but that these very evils which we are to 
consider were the natural, if not inevitable, developments of 
human ignorance and weakness ; nay, and of the higher hu- 
man sentiments too : of the feelings of right and of religion. 
Not from some dark cavern are they let loose, like avenging 
furies ; not from some fabled Pandora's box have they issued, 
but from the bosom of humanity ; nor from any constitu- 
tional badness of nature, but from passions, from errors, 
from mistakes, from collisions, from circumstances necessari- 
ly attaching to this nature. I pray you to look more nearly 
into these evils than you do when you generalize and sum 
them up into one portentous and crushing mass of gratui- 
tous calamity and wrong. Thus, error, for instance — religious 
error, superstition in many forms — could man escape it? 
Thus, again, in rude and lawless times, was not the govern- 



206 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

ing hand likely to hold things with a strong grasp — to be 
despotic and oppressive ? And when questions arose be- 
tween nations, was it not natural that they should resort to 
physical force — i. e., to war? Could rude barbarians stand 
still to argue? Could they settle, could they understand 
any code of international law ? Was it not almost inevit- 
able that they should fight ? If the question was about a 
piece of land, or a fishery, was there anything else for them 
to do but to endeavor to push one another from the disputed 
possession ? Supposing the parties to be honest — supposing 
that each believed the thing in question to belong to him — 
supposing there was no umpire to which they could appeal ; 
must not a natural sense of justice have led them to strive 
for their right ? War is ordinarily the clash of opinions. 
" You have got that which is mine," one says ; " you will 
not give it to me ; you will not listen to my just claims for 
it : then I must take it from you." In fact, must not this, 
where the case arises, be the language of to-day ? But cer- 
tainly, where neither right nor reason would be listened to, 
must not the party wronged, or conceiving himself to be 
wronged, enforce his claim with the strong arm — or else sit 
down,, abused, crushed, robbed, and despoiled on every 
hand ? 

Doubtless there has been violence enough in the world 
which has had no such plea. I only wished to show that it 
is not all blank malignity nor wilful error which has filled 
the world with darkness and sorrow. And do you not sup- 
pose, let me ask, that He who made the world foresaw all 
this ? And are sin and pain agreeable to Infinite Benev- 
olence ? Must you not believe that God would have pre- 
vented them, had there not been obstacles to prevention in 
the very nature of things and in the welfare of the beings 
he made ? 

It is of some such intrinsic obstacle, I think, that Plato 
speaks, under the name of " necessity," — a something inev- 
itably and inextricably interwoven with the constitution of 
things, and preventing the exclusion of evil and misery 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 207 

from the world. He appears to me obscurely to intimate in 
a passage of the Timssus, that view of the origin of evil which 
I have endeavored plainly to set forth in these lectures as 
the true and only solution of that dark problem. His mind 
evidently had not settled upon any theory. Sometimes he 
speaks of a malignant heing, next in power to God, as having 
introduced evil into the creation ; sometimes of dark, in- 
tractable, obstinate matter, as the source of evil ; for these 
old ideas of Zoroaster seem to have pervaded all antiquity. 
But in the Timseus we find him speaking of " necessity " as 
some strong and apparently opposing power, " on which," to 
use the language of a learned commentator,* " on which the 
divine energy was constantly exercised, not so much in direct- 
ly overcoming as in controlling and directing it to the accom- 
plishment of the Divine purposes." " But since," says Plato, 
" mind (i. e., the Supreme Mind) rules necessity by persuad- 
ing her to bring to the best results the most of things as 
they are generated (or made) ; thus in this way, through ne- 
cessity overcome by rational persuasion, this universe re- 
ceived its construction ; " or was fashioned into its present 
order. 

" By rational persuasion," says Plato, i. e., not by irre- 
sistible coercion, but by a wise urging and turning of things 
that are unavoidably liable to evil, to good account. This is 
the light, in fact, in which I am about to speak of the special 
problems which are now before us. 

Indeed, our Holy Scriptures teach a doctrine not dissim- 
ilar to this ; as when they say that " God causes the wrath 
of man to praise him, and the remainder of wrath he re- 
strains ; " as when they say that he permitted certain things 
to the Hebrew people " because of the hardness of their 
hearts," i. e., because they could bear no better ; as when 
they say, " I gave them statutes that were not good," i. <?., 
not absolutely good — not in themselves desirable, but toler- 
ated, and turned to good account. 

I know there are those who regard human superstition, 
* Prof. Tayler Lewis on " Plato against the Atheists." p. 21*7. 



208 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

oppression and strife, simply and only as the results of a de- 
praved nature ; who see no farther into the great problem 
of human fortunes ; who, as they look back upon the history 
of the world, only exclaim, " See what a wicked race ! " But 
the philosophy of human life and history, and, as I conceive, 
a just reverence for the Divine Providence, demand another 
consideration of things. It would be deplorable for us to 
leave the world-story in that blank abstraction. It would 
quench all good faith in the past, and all good hope of the 
future. It would be strange, also — nay, incredible, that hu- 
man nature and history should want all those evidences of 
wise and good design of which the material world is full. 

I say, then, and lay down these three propositions : First, 
that the bad institutions and usages of the world, whether 
religious, political, or warlike, have been better than none ; 
secondly, that they have been the only ones in every age 
that the world could then receive ; and thirdly, that they 
have ministered to human energy and improvement, and ul- 
timately to human happiness. 

First, they have been better than none. Idolatry has 
been better than no religion ; superstition than no restraint ; 
despotism than no government. War itself has been bet- 
ter than no activity — better than savage stupor and indo- 
lence, or stupid submission to wrong. It has developed more 
strength, more heroism, more virtue, than absolute languor 
or moral indifference would have done. The strife of man 
with man in the assertion of rights, or what were deemed to 
be rights, was better than a total disregard of all right. For 
suppose that one man or nation does another man or nation 
a gross wrong ; taking away with the strong hand lands, 
goods, property, rights — nay, wife and children. The inva- 
ding nation carries them off! Would you have the wrong 
quietly acquiesced in — submitted to in dull stupidity ? It 
would be to deny our humanity. No, we would have every 
man feel the right, and fairly assert and defend it. We would 
have force applied for that end where it is necessary. And 
this force, intervening in national questions, is war. Some 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 209 

wars have been right, though many have been wrong. We 
must not, for the abuses of a principle, however enormous, 
discard the principle. It is right to assert our rights, and 
to compel others, if we cannot persuade them, to abstain 
from wrong. This appertains to our humanity. A sense of 
right must so assert itself; and if rights could be violated, 
and no resistance, no contention followed, humanity itself 
would be dead. 

Secondly, the institutions and usages of every age have 
been the only ones it could receive. The mind of every age 
has been bodied forth in its religious systems, in its political 
forms, in its activity, whatever that activity has been. Its 
action, its idea of right, and its mode of righting itself, would 
have been better if its mind had been more improved. Each 
form of development has been that which the spirit of the 
time gave to it. 

Let us state this point, however, with proper care and 
qualification. In one respect, the rudest age is susceptible 
of high teaching — is capable of receiving the very highest 
ideals. There are certain innate ideas of right, of justice, 
of religion — eternal intuitions — to which appeal may al- 
ways be made. To these, prophets and wise men have ever 
appealed, and met an unhesitating response. But institu- 
tions, usages, are different things. These must be in gener- 
al accordance with the culture of a' people. Yet even here 
there is still room for the reformer : because the institutions 
are ever falling behind the culture, and need to be reformed. 
Nevertheless, the reform in any given period, could not pro- 
ceed beyond a certain point. 

In ages of darkness and ignorance and materialism, su- 
perstition was inevitable ; oppression was inevitable ; war 
was inevitable. Men could not arrive at once, at refined and 
spiritual ideas of God, or at those ideas of moral justice 
that should banish oppression and war. They could not 
comprehend, they could not agree upon, those principles that 
should supersede coercion and strife with the strong hand. 
Alas ! the world does not comprehend them yet. But to 
14 



210 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

the infant world it had been as impossible to teach the 
highest ideas of religion, of law, and of the right social 
relationships, as it would be to instruct one of our infant 
schools in the mathematics, in astronomy, and moral phi- 
losophy. 

Thirdly, the defective religion, polity, and intercourse of 
the nations have ministered to their energy, improvement, 
and happiness. They have not only been better than none ; 
they have not only been, in general, as good as the general 
mind could receive ; but they have done good. This obser- 
vation opens the whole field of our present discussion. 

But in entering upon it, I wish carefully to state the 
ground upon which I proceed. I said in my opening lec- 
ture, that in the prosecution of the subject, I had nothing 
more at heart than to show how this system of human free 
action, while necessarily free, in order to he a moral system, 
is nevertheless governed and controlled so as to bring about 
good ends. But I seek now, in this connection, to make the 
distinction between freedom and control — between the erring 
of the human will and the overruling of it for good — perfect- 
ly explicit and clear. In man as a free agent, there is, of 
necessity, the power and liability to err, to go wrong. Act- 
ing freely, he runs into polytheism and idolatry ; he builds 
up despotic governments ; he wages cruel war ; he oppresses 
his fellow. Now in this mass of error and evil, there are 
two elements. There was mistake^ incident to the infancy 
and ignorance of the world. Or, there was theoretical im- 
perfection — as, for instance, in idolatry and despotism — and 
yet, withal, a certain fitness for the time. And there was 
downright and wicked hate, and cruelty. Now this I am not 
to defend. I do not say, with some, that evil is good ; that 
there is no evil in the universe. I say and feel that hate and 
cruelty are evil and wrong and odious. But I maintain 
that out of this whole system — out of mistake and imper- 
fection, and in spite of hate and wrong, good has come ; and 
this it is my simple and sole business to show. It is not to 
defend human erring ; not to lessen rny own or your sense of 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 211 

it; but to show the guardianship over it of a divine and 
guiding Providence. 

There is one point, especially, on which I admit all that 
can be charged upon human erring ; and that is, the abuse 
of power ; of power in religion, of power in government ; 
of power military, feudal, social, individual. Power of 
every hind has been abused, beyond anything else that man 
has possessed. There is nothing that distresses me in the 
contemplation of past ages or of the present age, like the in- 
humanity of power. That which furnishes the noblest 
opportunity for doing good, has been turned into the most 
frightful instrument of cruelty and oppression. " Man's in- 
humanity to man " — whether it be a doom to the prison, to 
the rack, or the fire, or whether it be the scornful word of 
the superior to the inferior — I have nothing to say for it ; I 
give it up to the righteous indignation of all just men. Let 
that indignation rise higher and higher ; let it accumulate 
in mountain masses, to crush and drive the accursed thing 
out of the world. 

What then am I to say to all this ? This, first of all : 
that to a free nature, even that hateful abuse could not be 
forbidden. Man must do what he will. Here, now, to-day, 
you have power to strike down an inferior in strength or 
station. God does not miraculously interpose to wither the 
lifted arm, or to palsy the proud and scornful tongue. And 
then, next, I must resist the impression that all this abuse 
of power is a mass of unmitigated evil. I must not leave 
it to be supposed that this has been a godless and forsaken 
world. Amidst the stragglings of man with man, I must 
endeavor to show that all has not been intentional wrong ; 
that there have been unavoidable mistakes ; that there have 
been insuperable difficulties ; and that there has been good 
amidst evil. I must endeavor also to correct our own mis- 
takes in looking at these things ; and to present the great 
institutions that have presided over the world, in the justest 
light that I can. 

In the first place, then, we are to speak of polytheism 



212 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

and Idolatry. And here we find immediate occasion for ap- 
plying the observation just made to the old religion. There 
are mistaken views with which we have grown up from our 
childhood, that need to be reconsidered. For instance, 
beast worship, among the Egyptians, the worship of dogs, 
cats, and even of meaner creatures ; looking at it as we 
have, it has, of course, always seemed to us an unspeakable 
degradation. In the view we have been accustomed to take' 
of it, it might well have seemed to us, as partly it has, an 
incredible degradation. It passes belief, that any human 
beings should be so stupid as literally to worship the mean- 
est reptiles. Yet more is this incredible of a cultivated 
people, like the Egyptians ; who had carried the practical 
arts to a point hardly surpassed by ourselves ; who had a 
learned priesthood, to which the Grecian sages resorted for 
instruction ; upon one of whose temples, at Sais, was re- 
corded that sublime inscription, expressive of the Divine 
nature — the sublimest of all heathen antiquity — " I am all 
that has been, all that is, and all that shall be. No mortal 
has ever raised the veil that conceals me! " * 

What then, was this mysterious Existence ? It was that 
great Life of Nature, which all the East worshipped. And 
no doubt, it was this great Life of Nature that the Egyp- 
tians worshipped under animal forms. In this view, Hegel 
maintains that the worship of animals is noway less respect- 
able than the worship of the sun and stars.f He remarks, 
indeed, that there is something peculiarly incomprehensible 
and mysterious in the animal spirit — dumb and shut up — 
never articulating its thought. If we compare it with the 
spirit in ourselves, he says, it is clear that we less understand 
it ; for we know ourselves by consciousness. But what is 
passing in the horse, the ox, or the dog, we do not know ; 
and the idea and the observation must be familiar to us all, 
that " we should like to know what they think." " A 
black cat stealing by us in the twilight," says Hegel, 

* Proclus adds, " and the fruit I have produced is the sun ! " 
f Philosophie der Geschichte, p. 258, 259. 



ON THE PEOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 213 

" brings over our minds an impression as of something pre- 
ternatural." 

Then again, with regard to idolatry, the worship of 
images : the idea that these images of wood and stone were 
literally worshipped as the all-powerful deities who presided 
over the world, is utterly inadmissible. They were wor- 
shipped, doubtless, as representatives, symbols of the gods. 
This worship, however, became so gross that it was vehement- 
ly denounced by the Hebrew prophets ; though there is rea- 
son to believe that there was a time when a species of images, 
called Teraphim, were recognized in the Hebrew worship.* 

And with regard, in fine, to polytheism itself, great as 
the error was, yet it was natural, and perhaps unavoidable. 
The rude mind, in the infancy of the world, first awaking to 
the conception of unseen, stupendous, creative agencies 
around it, would not, perhaps could not, immediately learn 
that all these agencies centred in one Being. 

But I must desire you to observe, that great as the error 
and the evil of polytheism were, it was not powerless, nor 
altogether useless. What a keen and quickened sense of 
religion must it have nourished ! We have no devotees to 
compare with those of India and Thibet. In Lassa, • the 
metropolis of Bhuddism, says the traveller, M. Hue, the 
whole population gathers at nightfall into little circles for 
prayer ; the sound goes up from the whole city. But look 
at the ancient polytheism. Erring as it was, yet how strong 
it must have been, and intense, and ever awake ! A local de- 
ity, instead of one far off; a god of the field and the stream 
and the grove, and of the house, and of the very hearthstone ; 
how must it have struck the every-day and hourly thought 
of men ! In the later ages of Grecian and Boman refine- 
ment, this religion was dying out, and so making way for 
another ; men did not believe in the religion of their fathers, 
and the Christian apologists might well speak, as they did 
speak, of its inefficacy ; but in its pristine strength, it was 
far from deserving that charge. Then, again, the idol, the 
* See Hosea iii. 4, 5, and Newman's Hebrew Monarchy, p. 28. 



214: ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

visible symbol of the present deity in every household; 
how must it have appealed to the imagination, and the very 
sense ! Its wooden or stony eye ; how must it have seemed 
at times to look into the very misdeeds of men ! The Catho- 
lics feel a similar influence now, and their sense of religion, 
whatever may be thought of it in other views, is stronger 
and more frequently awakened, I have no doubt, than that 
of many Protestants. Nay, I should doubt whether the 
Protestant world has not swung too far toward the limit of 
bare and naked spiritualism. Some sense of this I mark in 
that extraordinary movement some years ago, known as 
Puseyism, in the Church of England ; in which if there were 
some things that I could not sympathize with, yet this ten- 
dency to reconsider and reassume some elements of the past, 
were it wisely controlled, I cannot help regarding as healthy 
and good. Then, again, and once more, the sacrifices of the 
old religion, the victim on the altar, the daily rising incense 
— all that direct and visible appeal to Heaven ; how impres- 
sive must it have been to the worshipper ! And every head 
of a household too, was a consecrated priest : now few men 
comparatively are priests in their families, in any sense. 
And when the parent took his child from its mother's bosom 
and sent it through the fire, a victim to Moloch — dreadful 
god — that offering was not hypocritical, but terribly sin- 
cere ; it was not a mere form, but religion awfully in ear- 
nest ; it was not mere cruelty, but the shuddering homage 
of religious fear — of a fear strong enough to tear the very 
life-cords from the palpitating heart ! In all this there was 
much error ; but in all this there was a tremendous power 
to bind the rude mind to religion of some sort, and to re- 
strain its wildest excesses. The bond of religion, the dread 
of Divine displeasure, I am inclined to think, was stronger 
then than it is now. Men now, in courts of justice and in 
national quarrels, appeal against bad faith, to Heaven ; but 
not perhaps with such positive impression and effect, as 
when they said in old time, " The gods will punish you ! 
Neptune will awake his storms, Jupiter will launch his 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 215 

thunder against you ! the god of the rooftree will desolate 
your dwelling ; the god of the field will sweep down your 
harvests, or will send disease among your flocks ! " Other 
things are indeed to be desired in religion besides strength, 
and no one would bring back the old superstition ; but here, 
I say, was strength ; here was a power over the infant 
world, the highest that it could receive, which guided and 
controlled its steps, and was leading them on to something- 
better. 

Turn now, in the second place, to the political relations 
of men. A hard and grinding despotism weighed upon the 
ancient world. Equal laws, the just rights of men, were 
unknown. The chieftain — patriarch, priest, or king — reigned 
with absolute authority. Here and there, democracies, re- 
publics sprang up, but died away as soon, and were, in fact, 
despotic while they lasted. And throughout the ancient 
world, there was no just conception of the equal rights of 
men. The many bowed down to the few with absolute, 
slavish, superstitious allegiance. The people, even in feudal 
Europe, says Guizot, were as timid as sheep. We see the 
injustice and falsity of all this. We have better theories. 
But what would our theories of equal rights have done, if 
they had been cast into the bosom of the old Asiatic na- 
tions ; ay, or into the communes and kingdoms of the mid- 
dle ages ? Torn them all to pieces. Society could not have 
lived a day with these theories. The single, strong arm was 
necessary to bind and hold together the wild elements of 
the primeval world. The deep and lowly submission to it 
was necessary. It was more than merely necessary; it w T as 
beneficial. Absolute rule was the best thing possible ; and 
it was attended with the then best possible results. 

This instinct, the blind instinct of obedience, natural to 
rude and savage life, worked usefully in two ways. Eirst 
it was a good guidance for those whose minds could not yet 
rise to any high or reverential obedience to law, or to a, po- 
litical constitution. It was well that something should attach 
them to the chieftain, to the king, to the head of the State. 



216 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

And then the sentiment was saved from the meanness and 
degradation that would otherwise have belonged to it, by 
its being so reverential, affectionate, and disinterested. There 
was something affecting and beautiful, as well as fit for its 
time, in these old homages to superior rank. The attach- 
ment of the Scottish clansman to his chief, of the feudal 
retainer to his lord, was often of the most touching charac- 
ter. It is good to reverence something / and even the ex- 
cess of the homage is better than the opposite extreme. I 
had rather pay it, than always to stand up stiffly for my 
rights. I like the story of the son of Ivan IV". of Russia, 
better than some with which our theories of equal rights 
might furnish us. The armies of the emperor, says the 
annalist, had been worsted in one or two engagements. 
His favorite son said, " Let me go and take the command." 
The brutal father, stung with self-reproach, jealousy and 
anger, felled him to the ground, with a blow, that, it was 
evident, must prove mortal. Struck with horror at what 
he had done, the emperor rolled in agony upon the 
floor, and offered millions to his physicians if they would 
save his child. The dying son, as he lay upon his couch, 
strove to reassure his father. " You did right," he said, " to 
strike me. I ought not to have asked you that question. I 
have offended against the laws of the empire and against 
you ; and I deserve to die." 

All power, alas ! is liable to abuse, and to the grossest ; 
but protestants against despotism as we Americans are, we 
are prone perhaps to do it some injustice. Certain it is, 
that it has often been paternal and protective, in proportion 
as the homage to it has been filial and affectionate. Hegel 
says that there was more personal freedom in the old Assy- 
rian Empire than in Rome. In those soft Eastern climes 
especially, the government was paternal, the people as chil- 
dren, compared with the stern Roman rule and the stalwart 
Roman men. The Oriental despotism, compared with the 
Roman, was as a flowery girdle to an iron band. The Per- 
sian monarch was a sort of teacher and sage to the people; 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 217 

attendant scribes, in court and camp, were ever at hand to 
write down his sayings ; and these were deposited in the 
state archives, as the annals of his reign * — a tremendous 
environment for a man, and it must have made him thought- 
ful, and his speech the wiser. In the earliest times of the 
East, the patriarchal king sat in the gate. The Persian 
royal palace was called the Porte or Gate f — and hence the 
phrase Sublime Porte, to describe the Ottoman sovereignty 
— the patriarchal king sat in the gate, to hear complaints 
and award justice ; and although, in later times and in 
crowded empires, this was, of course, impossible, yet always 
there was a right of personal appeal, as of children to a pa- 
rent, unknown to our more complicated systems of admin- 
istration. The court was a scene of magnificent hospitality : 
Ctesias, a Greek historian of Artaxerxes' time, says that 
fifteen thousand persons sat down daily at the king's table ; 
seemingly an incredible number; according to Xenophon, 
it took — I know not hoio many persons to make Cambyses' 
bed4 In short, more ease, freedom, and happiness existed 
under these old despotisms, than we are apt to think — bad 
as they undoubtedly were. 

But I must now turn, in the third place, to a more awful 
element in the world-problem ; and that is war. 

I have already said that it has been, and is, inevitable. 
In fact, unless we give up the right of self-preservation ; un- 
less we go the length of saying that any man who pleases, 
may take what he will of ours, or may break our limbs, or 
beat us to death, without resistance from us, we admit the 
principle that lies at the bottom of war. ' But let us con- 
sider further, whether it has not a providential place in the 
world, among the means of its discipline and culture. 

There certainly have been worse things in the world 
than war. There have been states and conditions of human 
society, worse than that of martial conflict, and which that 

* Heeren, Asiatic Nation?, vol. i. p. 55, Bohn's ed. 

f Ibid. p. 260. 

% Heeren's Researches, Asiatic Nations, vol. i. p. 254. 



218 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

conflict has broken up : deep-seated injustice, which nothing 
but a violent shock conld overturn ; intolerable oppression, 
universal corruption and licentiousness, universal effeminacy 
and stupor. Better that the cause of justice and right be 
pleaded with the sword, than not pleaded at all. I had 
rather see the moral sentiments, or the material interests of 
men, in fierce collision, than in a state of palsy and death ; 
it is more hopeful, if not more agreeable. 

Then, again, war is a means of intercourse, communica- 
tion of knowledge, interfusion of ideas, between nations. In 
some cases, there seems no other way to lift a people out of 
its stupor and degradation. By means of isolation alone, 
China has remained the same for ages. But in times when 
there was no printing, and little travel, nations lay side by 
side, more ignorant of each other than people now are in 
opposite hemispheres. What, then, did a war effect ? It 
brought nations into the presence of each other's homes, in- 
stitutions, usages, arts. Thus the Northern barbarians were 
brought to look upon the Roman civilization. Imagine the 
Eoman Empire to have gone on undisturbed, sinking 
deeper and deeper into lethargy, luxury, and corruption ; 
and the Goths and Yandals to have remained in their rock 
fastnesses and woody deserts, the same brutish people. In- 
stead of this, the invasions have given us — cultivated Eu- 
rope. 

But we must go to a question more radical, with regard 
to the influence of war upon the human character and con- 
dition. Could the world, or can it, go on nobly — go on im- 
proving — go on safely even, without this dread discipline 
of war ? The elder Bonaparte is reported to have said, 
" The conscription is the everlasting root of a nation, its 
moral purification, the real foundation of its habits." I do 
not know precisely what he meant by that ; but I should 
interpret it thus : Lay upon every family in a nation the 
bond of that dread liability — that one of its members may 
be called forth to fight and die for his country ; and you put 
a principle of sobriety, of manliness, of sacrifice, of obedience 



ON THE PEOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 219 

to the law, of consecration to the common weal, into that 
family, which nothing else perhaps could impart to it. Who 
does not feel that such an inquisition coming to the house- 
hold, for son, brother, or father, must search out and stir to 
the very heart everything loyal, heroic, ay, and religious, in 
it % And how many have felt this in the present solemn 
crisis in our country ! How many have found life, with 
them, to be more earnest, high hearted, meditative, and 
prayerful than it ever was before ! 

Suppose, on the contrary — in this nation or any other — 
war never to come. Days, years, centuries pass on, and in 
all the households of a people there is nothing but toil, ac- 
cumulation, multiplication of comforts and luxuries, care for 
themselves and their children. Can human nature be 
trusted thus to go on, in profound and unbroken peace and 
prosperity % In its present state, I must doubt whether it 
can. We have been wont, in former days, to bless our- 
selves, that, separated by the ocean from Europe and Eu- 
ropean complications, we had the prospect of going on for 
ages, undisturbed by the alarms and horrors of war. That 
dream is broken by intestine discord, and by the levelling 
of the ocean barrier through steam communication ; and 
for my part, I believe it is best for us that we are to take 
our share in the solemn experience and discipline of 
nations. 

But at the same time, while I see and admit the inevi- 
tableness and the moral uses of war, I believe that the war 
time is a transition state in the world, and that a better 
time is to come. I look upon war as being to the body 
politic what disease is to the individual. When men learn 
to live more wisely, simply, and innocently, there will be 
less disease : ultimately there may be little or none. But 
till then, disease is not only inevitable in the constitution, 
but is a moral element bound up with it and essential to its 
welfare. So with war: human society will outgrow it, 
when it outgrows its vices, its angry passions, its injustice, 
selfishness, and ambition. Till then, the world must suffer, 



220 ON THE PKOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

and I believe it is best that it should suffer, from this fear- 
ful scourge.* 

The last specific problem to be considered is slavery ; the 
subjection of man to man ; the subjection, not of man to the 
Government, but of man to man — of the serf to his feudal 
lord, of the slave to his master. It is a fact, in the history 
of past ages, too universal to be overlooked ; too deep 
founded in the order of the world, to be passed by. I am 
acquainted with no such fact among animals — except the ant 
— as one making a servant, serf, or slave of another ; or one 
species, of another and inferior species. Everywhere in the 
history of the human race, we are met with this stupendous 
problem : how is it, or why is it, that man has thus been 
subject to man ; that a condition, directly opposite to every 
free tendency of humanity, should have been as universal 
almost, as if it had been an ordinance of nature ? 

I desire you to dismiss from your thoughts all those 
questions connected with this subject, which are so warmly 
debated at the present moment : I am looking at the course 
of ages, and not at the controversy of to-day. Keep your 
own opinions, whatever they be ; for the present I contro- 
vert none of them. Nay, let a man entertain the worst 
opinion possible of the system ; all the more reason is there, 
it seems to me, why he should desire to see, in the calm 
survey of God's government over the world, all the good he 
can see, coming out of it ; and all the more, the worse he 
thinks of it. 

Montesquieu observes, in his Spirit of Laws, that slavery, 
cruel as it seems, and unjust as it certainly is in the form of 
chattel slavery, had its origin in comparative mercy. That 

* I have been led to some modification of my views of war, by M. Prudhon's 
" La Guerre et la Faiz " (War and Peace). I have been led to see it, that is 
to say, more as a Providential fact ; to be accepted with patience, instead of be- 
ing regarded simply as horrible. M. Cousin led the way, in the same course of 
thought, in his Lectures Introductory to the Philosophy of History ; see lee. ix. 
latter part. With regard to the New Testament protest against fighting, I re- 
gard it as a protest, noj against war absolutely, but against the ordinary war 
spirit. 



ON THE PKOBLEM OP HUMAN DESTINY. 221 

is to say, it succeeded, in the morality of nations, the bar- 
barons practice of putting to death all captives made in 
war. But I was about to observe, that there was another 
step which society had to take, that involved greater diffi- 
culty. It passed from the slaughter to the slavery of cap- 
tives ; that perhaps was not difficult ; and it certainly was 
beneficial. But how was it to pass from its nomadic state, 
from the wild and wandering habits of the hunter and shep- 
herd, to settled abode, and the tillage of the soil ? It has 
been contended by an able French writer, M. Auguste 
Comte, that fixed occupation must have been originally en- 
forced ; that the necessary industry could not have been 
obtained but by compulsion. He maintains that the nat- 
ural indolence of mankind, and especially in warm climates, 
could, in no other way, have been overcome. We, stirring 
Anglo-Saxon men, cannot understand it perhaps ; and there 
may be more truth in it than we suspect. If it he so, then 
look at it. Here are men doomed to death, saved alive ; 
that is something. Then here is a soil which, in the ruder 
ages, nobody will cultivate without compulsion ; and these 
men are put to work upon it. I have said in former lec- 
tures, that hunger was a spur to activity. To regular ac- 
tivity, to industry, other inducements may have been neces- 
sary. And although they may have been wrongfully or 
cruelly applied, yet it cannot but be grateful — looking 
away from man's injustice to God's wisdom and goodness 
— to see any good that has come out of evil. 

In the next place, this translation of men from states of 
barbarism and ignorance into more civilized communities, 
has been a means sometimes — has opened a school, however 
unintentionally, for their improvement. Civilization has 
thus taken the wilder natures into its bosom, and, with how- 
ever much imperfection and error, has performed the office 
of education. The Thraeian and German tribes experienced 
that effect in the old Koman school : and there is one in- 
stance on record where the civilizing influence came from 
the other side ; for Herodotus tells us that the Lydians did 



222 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

that service to their Persian conquerors and masters. But 
look at Africa. Surrounded by a wall of darkness, and 
filled with cruelty and blood ; with no civilizing influence 
in herself, as the story of ages has proved ; what now do we 
see ? Britain sends to her borders the man stealer, to tear 
her children from her bosom, and transport them to the 
American colonies. It was a deed of unmingled atrocity ; 
compared with which, capture in war was generous and 
honorable : the African king of Dahomey grows white by 
the side of the Saxon slave-trader. But what follows % The 
African people in this country improve, and are now far ad- 
vanced beyond their kindred at home. And now they be- 
gin to return; they are building a state on their native 
borders, which promises to stop the slave trade with Africa, 
and to spread light and civilization through her dark soli- 
tudes. Was this the best means conceivable, to such an 
end ? "No, but it was a means ; and the best means possible 
— man being left free to act his pleasure. Was it his design 
to civilize Africa ? No, but God may overrule his action to 
bring about that result.* 

We have now examined the four great historic problems : 
Polytheism and Idolatry, Despotism, War, and Servitude. 
But these are all wrapped up and comprehended in another, 
which is yet to be considered ; and that is the prevalence 
of error. The place and part which error has had in the 
world, and in the working out of the world's problem — this 
more precisely is what we have to consider. 

Some place and part it must necessarily have had. For 
although men might have just ideas of certain absolute truths, 
and have had them — as of the beauty and rectitude of jus- 
tice and benevolence — yet when they came to apply these 
ideas to practice, to institutions in religion, in government ; 

*I cannot leave this subject without lifting up my hands and heart to the 
great hope, that the way is now opened for purging our American soil from the 
stain of slavery. Many of us have long been asking how this was ever to be 
done. At length we see the way. The slave system is destroying itself. The 
madness of the slavemaster is breaking the chains of the slave. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 223 

to usages in war, or to the relations of man to man, it was inev- 
itable that they should err. What place, then, has this erring ? 

Now to some, the problem may present itself in this 
way — that things should have been so ordered in Divine 
Providence, that error should seem to have been better than 
truth, polytheism than pure theism, despotism than equal 
rule, servitude than freedom, war than peace. That error 
should seem to have worked better than truth, wrong than 
right — does it not appear to be a contradiction in ideas? 
Does it not stamp the charge of essential falsity upon human 
nature itself? 

To this I reply, in the first place, that it is mainly a mis- 
statement of the problem. The case is too broadly stated, 
and only requires some analysis, to be relieved of its main 
difficulty. In all the instances referred to, there has been a 
mixture of truth and error. And it is the truth, and not the 
error, in every case, that has been useful. Thus in religion ; 
the belief in an all-creating Power ; the feeling that that 
power was present in all nature and life ; and the attempt 
simply to express or body it forth in visible forms — all this 
was right, and it was useful. Even the giving to this Power 
" a local habitation and a name " for every place it occupied, 
was, to a certain extent, right ; it conveyed a j uster idea, I 
am. tempted to say, than that extreme abstraction of thought, 
which sees God nowhere. The excesses to which all this 
went, the low and degrading forms of idolatry, the errors, 
in short, were the things that were not useful. The essen- 
tial strength of polytheism lay in the truths, and not in the 
falsehoods it involved. So also with regard to superstition — 
that men should/m^ God, should feel that He is displeased 
with evil ; that He would punish evil — this was right : 
and it was useful. When it went too far, when it cre- 
ated an irrational terror; in so far, that is to say, as 
it was false, it was not useful. Then again that govern- 
ment should be strong, and controlling, and, simply 
as a form of government, despotic, was necessary and 
beneficial. That political form is the best, the nearest to 



224: ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

right, which is best suited to the people to be governed. 
And for a rude, ignorant, lawless people, a strong, central 
controlling power is best. But the selfishness, injustice, and 
cruelty with which it is often exercised, are not good, nor 
do they work any good. The ideas of divine right in a 
government, and of the duty of religious obedience to it, 
could they be justly construed, are right and useful ; and 
they have worked usefully in all ages. It is evident that 
God meant that nations should have some kind of govern- 
ment ; for they cannot he nations, cannot be moral, peace- 
ful, well-ordered communities, without it. Government, 
therefore, in a certain sense, is of God. What, then, has 
been the error? That of investing government with irre- 
sponsible, unlimited power — that of consecrating its abuses, 
worshipping its very tyranny, enthroning its very corrup- 
tion. That part of absolute sovereignty has not been the use- 
ful part. The truth has been good, but not the error. 
Then, once more, with regard to war and servitude — in con- 
sidering which, the question is about usages rather than 
theories — certainly I do not say that evil has worked better 
than good would have done. A war may be right — a bat- 
tle to defend homes and households, to resist overwhelm- 
ing wrong, to achieve a lawful freedom. Such a war does 
good. It sets up and sanctifies with blood the great and 
everlasting claim of right. Human blood is not too dear to 
pour out for such cause. The names of Thermopylae and 
Salamis, of Bunker Hill and Yorktown and Fort Moultrie, 
are watchwords to honor, to patriotic vigilance and self- 
sacrifice in all time. But wars of mere ambition and desire 
of conquest, have another account to settle ; the worse they 
have been, the worse has been their influence ; and any . 
good that has sprung from them has been incidental, and, 
has arisen in spite of them. And so in the subjection of 
man to man — not the bad elements, but the good, have done 
good ; not injustice or cruelty, but kindness and care — the 
superiority that has been humane and gentle. If you could 
suppose that, not by human violence and injustice, but by 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 225 

the simple fiat of Providence, a rude, ignorant, nomadic 
people was taken and transferred to the presence of a culti- 
vated people, to be trained to regular industry and social 
and spiritual improvement, you would say that was a good. 

Thus I think that I see a great, a solemn, a Divine Pro- 
vidence extracting good out of all the conditions upon which 
humanity has fallen. I think that it becomes me to be 
patient with what God has permitted. I look with awe 
upon the sphere in which an Infinite Providence is working. 
I think it is but reverent to seek for the good that is evolved 
from the dark and mysterious ways of Heaven, rather than 
to look upon anything that Heaven permits, as altogether 
dark and evil. I understand well enough what indignation 
at evil and wrong, is ; but I doubt whether that is the last 
and best state of any thoughtful mind. I might rail at 
the world, and heap wrath and scorn upon it ; but I believe 
that philosophy is better than satire. "With a brotherly 
consideration and sympathy and sorrow, must I take into 
my heart the struggling fortunes of my kind. What mis- 
takes, what errors, what crimes, what sufferings, what over- 
whelming floods of disaster, what a mournful train of evils, 
filling the long track of ages ! I must see something besides 
this — something beside evil or the Evil One in the world. 
I must see God in history ; or I must not look at it at all. 

But far be it from me, at the same time, to spread the 
shield of this philosophy over any mistakes that now de- 
mand to be corrected, over any evils that now can be rem- 
edied. 

That evil has been overruled for good in certain cir- 
cumstances, is no argument for abetting or perpetuating it? 
but the very contrary. In the calm and philosophic consid- 
eration of the past, I can have patience with its errors and 
abuses ; but patience with present evil and wrong, though 
possibly to some impetuous spirits it may need to be recom- 
mended, is a virtue scarce likely to need any general incul- 
cation or enforcement. On the contrary, we are far too 
liable to acquiesce in established wrong, far too slow to ap- 
15 



226 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

preliend the high point after which we should be reaching 
and striving. Custom, habitude, even prejudice has its 
uses ; there would be no stability without it ; but it would 
be death, if it were not mixed up with the element of prog- 
ress. Therefore we need ever to hear the stirring words 
of the reformer. The human mind must not stand still. 
It cannot indeed forsake entirely " the old paths," nor 
ought it to do so. But it must not stand still. Therefore, 
I say, must the great word, Reform, be sounded out through 
the world. It has been sounded out through all past ages. 
It has been the trumpet call that has led on that grand 
march of progress, whose steps are centuries ; whose his- 
tory is the history of all time ; whose forces are every day 
sweeping on with accelerated movement ; and whose final 
victory must be the redemption of the world from Idolatry 
and Despotism, and War and Bondage and Error. 

To trace this great movement in the world, will be the 
object of the two remaining lectures. 



LEOTTTKE XI. 

HISTORIC VIEW OF HUMANITY: HUMAN PROGRESS— THE 
AGENCIES EMPLOYED IN IT ; THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT 
—OF INSTITUTIONS— AND OF ACTIONS OR EVENTS. 

We have hitherto surveyed humanity in its fixed and 
permanent conditions. We are now to contemplate it in 
its grand movement. Hitherto, that is to say, our studies 
have been occupied with man simply as a being, subject to 
certain principles and influences ; and subject to them in 
all ages ; subject to them alike, though not in the same de- 
gree, at the beginning as now. We have considered, first, 
the ultimate end evidently proposed in the creation around 
us and within us, human culture ; secondly, the fundamental 
principle on which the end is to be achieved, moral free- 
dom. Then, in five following lectures, we considered the 
ministration to this end, first, of the physical creation, of 
nature ; secondly, of man's physical organization ; thirdly, 
of his mental and moral constitution ; fourthly, of his com- 
plex nature, including the periods of life, society, sex, &c, ; 
and fifthly, of the occupation and arts of life — agriculture, 
manufactures, trade, and the learned professions ; and of 
architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, and litera- 
ture. In three more lectures we have considered certain 
circumstances pertaining to the human condition and cul- 
ture ; and circumstances which are thought to involve 
peculiar difficulty ; as first, imperfection, effort, and peni- 
tence ; illusion, fluctuation, indefiniteness of moral attain- 
ment, and bondage to the physical infirmities and appetites; 



228 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

secondly, pain, hereditary evil, death ; and thirdly, polythe- 
ism, despotism, war, servitude, and error. 

These are the subjects in which I have endeavored to 
interest you, in the ten previous lectures. In the two that 
remain of the course, I wish to invite your attention to the 
historic view of the human race ; to single out some of the 
leading traits that have marked its successive developments ; 
to contemplate — of course it must be in the most general 
way — the story of the world from the beginning. 

What was that beginning ? What, may we suppose, was 
the condition and character of the first inhabitants of the 
earth ? With the purpose which I have in view, I have no 
occasion to discuss the question whether the various races of 
men had their origin in distinct stocks, created in different 
parts of the world, or in the one pair in Eden. Were the 
first created men, whether many or few, brought into exist- 
ence in a state of high development— incarnate angels in 
wisdom, knowledge, virtue ; or in a state of infancy, igno- 
rance, and weakness? The question is enveloped in thick 
darkness ; and with regard to it, we are left mainly to infer- 
ence. Proceeding upon this ground, I adopt, for my part, 
the theory of an infancy for mankind : I mean, of an intel- 
lectual and moral infancy. There is no evidence in the 
Scripture record, whatever value or validity may be ascribed 
to it, that Adam was advanced beyond that condition. We 
are told that he was innocent at first — which he might be 
in a moral infancy ; and I find no mental act ascribed to 
him but that of naming the animals — which is the first and 
humblest step of thought. And I say that the natural in- 
ference from all we know, is, that the human race, like the 
human individual, began its career in infancy. When I see 
a tree growing through successive years, I naturally trace it 
back to the sapling. When I see a river gradually enlarg- 
ing as it flows, I justly conclude, not that it burst forth from 
the earth at first a noble and majestic stream, but that it 
began as a little rill. From the earliest recorded history of 
the human race, we see a constant progress ; and as we fol- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 229 

low it back, step by step, we naturally trace it to a begin- 
ning — to an infancy. 

From this beginning, I say, to the present day, there has 
been a progress ; a gradual advancement in human culture, 
character, knowledge ; institutions, government, state of 
society ; religion, virtue, and happiness. I shall take this 
for granted. I suppose that nobody denies it. It will be 
the ground idea of these two lectures. It will not be, there- 
fore, by analysis that I shall proceed; i. e., by taking the 
multifarious facts of history and life, and tracing them up 
to the one principle of progress, but by synthesis rather ; i. e., 
assuming the principle of progress as lying at the root of 
humanity, I shall speak of its actions and fortunes in suc- 
cessive ages, as the natural unfoldings of that principle. 
The fact of progress will be equally made out on either 
plan. 

But I shall not attempt, after the manner of the German 
philosophers, to construct the world out of an idea. Fichte, 
proceeding on Plato's doctrine of innate, seminal, world- 
producing ideas — a doctrine often reproduced in the later 
German philosophy — undertakes to deduce the epochs of 
human development and history, in their necessary order, 
from a certain principle. He conceives that things must 
have unfolded themselves, according to a certain plan, which 
he has wrought out in his own abstract contemplations. He 
tells his auditors, that, as a philosopher, he is not con- 
cerned with the facts, but only with his theory. He plainly 
says : " If the philosopher must deduce from the unity of 
his presupposed principle, all the possible phenomena of 
experience, it is obvious that in the fulfilment of this pur- 
pose, he does not require the aid of experience," and that 
" he pays no respect whatever to experience." * He says to 
his hearers, in substance : " I see, I know, from the very na- 
ture of humanity, and from the very nature of things, that 
the human race must pass through certain epochs. Two 
principles lie at the bottom, reason and freedom. The end 

* Fichte's Characteristics of the Present Age, p. 3. 



230 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

is free self-culture. The epochs must be these : the first, 
when reason is obeyed as an instinct ; the second, when 
despotic authority fastens itself upon the neck of this obe- 
dient reason ; the third, when the human mind struggles to 
free itself from this yoke — which is the present age ; the 
fourth, when reason shall reign as speculative truth ; and 
the fifth, when it shall reign as moral wisdom. Now I 
shall draw out these epochs from the one principle of free 
self-culture, as a matter of abstract reasoning ; you will see 
whether the facts correspond ; that is not my concern." 

I have thus referred to this work of Fichte — it is that on 
" The Characteristics of the Present Age " — not only as very 
curious and interesting, but as pursuing a method in direct 
contrast to that which I propose. For while I recognize 
the law of progress as self-evident and certain — it being the 
very nature of the mind and of all its faculties to expand 
and advance, as much as it is of a tree to grow, or of a 
stream to flow onward — I shall not attempt to deduce the 
necessary results of this law, but to point out the actual 
results. 

It has been made to appear, I trust, in our previous lec- 
tures, that all the great laws of nature, of life, and of hu- 
manity, tend to promote, as their end, human culture. As 
the proper complement of this representation, which has 
thus far been mostly applied to individual life, I wish now 
to show how the whole course of history, the collective life 
of the race, falls into accordance with it. For this purpose 
I propose to take a cursory view of the leading processes, 
circumstances, and agencies which have contributed to this 
result. 

With the task I have before me, it is time that I should 
have done with preliminary observations ; but there are yet 
two points which I must impress on your minds, even at the 
risk of repetition ; because in this matter they are the oppo- 
site poles of thought, upon which everything turns. 

Two principles, then, I say, preside over the world-devel 
opment ; human spontaneity and Divine control. When 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 231 

you look back upon past ages, upon past races, upon the 
heaving elements of the world's life, what impression do 
they convey to you ? Do they not appear to you in discon- 
nected fragments, in stupendous revolution, in wild and 
almost fortuitous disorder? Do not the fortunes of men, 
in this larger view, appear like a chaotic mass of accidents ? 
Bear in mind, then, on the one hand — do not merely say, but 
see clearly, and fully admit, that in the working out of the 
human problem, men must act their part freely — ay, fool- 
ishly, madly, distractedly, if you please ; any way, so it be 
freely done. In vain shall we look for any exact system of 
arrangements by which everything can be said to have 
helped on the race in the most direct way, to the most rapid 
advancement. No : it could not be so : the race must find, 
and make, and work out its own way. Cruelties, butch- 
eries, battles, murders, crushing oppressions, conflagrations 
kindled by incendiary hands, the whelming of cities and 
nations in fire and blood ; these things could not be helped, 
if man was to be free. Kay, free thought by its natural 
expansion, has burst asunder, age after age, the very frames 
and fixtures in which it grew — the idolatries, despotisms, 
false systems, cramping institutions ; and much to the gen- 
eral advantage, though to much temporary harm. 

But recollect, on the other hand, that things have never 
been left to run their own wild course, free from Divine 
control. In the very bosom of humanity are many checks, 
placed there by a Divine hand. There is what M. Guizot 
calls the " natural morality of man, which," as he truly 
says, " never abandons him in any condition, in any age of 
society, and mixes itself with the most brutal empire of 
ignorance or passion." * Men grow weary of wickedness, 
and ashamed of degradation. One wonders sometimes that 
human passion stops anywhere, but it does stop. One won- 
ders that communities and nations, sinking lower and lower 
into dissoluteness, do not sink to utter perdition ; but there 
are powers put forth to arrest their career. Powerful as 

*Histoire de la Civilization en France, tome i., p. 262. 



232 ON" THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

evil is, there are antagonist powers still stronger. There 18 
the woe that evil brings ; a flaming sword, set upon the 
heaven-erected barriers and battlements of all times, for 
the protection of the human race. And other messengers, 
too, are sent forth ; jet more distinct interpreters of the 
Great Will above. Through ages of declension from virtue 
and piety, ever from time to time, has rung out the stern 
and solemn voice of the reformer. Some Moses, some 
Menes or Confucius, some Zoroaster, some Socrates has 
arisen to call back the forgetful world from its wanderings. 
As Christians, we believe, also, in special interpositions for 
the rescue of the world from evil and misery. 

But this leads me to speak, as I propose to do in the pres- 
ent lecture, of the agencies which have been employed for 
the world's advancement. In considering these agencies, I 
shall not confine myself to any one precise order in which they 
have appeared, but shall be governed by that of time or 
affiliation or natural precedence, as I may find convenient. 

Thus the history of thought, in the first place, would take 
the natural precedence over every other topic ; because 
thought lies behind all other agencies, and is the cause of 
them. This great subject would naturally divide itself into 
a history of philosophy and a history of public sentiment. 
The first would embrace the theories of the few profound, 
speculative thinkers ; from Thales and Pythagoras down to 
the present day. The second would occupy itself with the 
pervading, the popular ideas, sentiments, and aims that have 
prevailed in successive ages. The first has been the subject 
of many treatises. The second has not, that I am aware, 
been attempted in any work distinctly and exclusively de- 
voted to it. It may be that the history of popular opinion 
would be too multifarious and too vague for any such definite 
treatment. But if the successive phases of public sentiment, 
like the theories of philosophy, could be traced; if the 
dominant thoughts that stirred in the bosom of the old 
Assyrian civilization, of the Egyptian, the Phoenician, the 
Hebrew, the Grecian, Roman, feudal, and modern civiliza- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 233 

tion, could be unfolded to me, I should better understand 
the world and the problem of the world's life, than by any 
other means whatever. 

This history of human thought, both philosophic and 
popular — you must see at once, how impossible it is that I 
should deal with it here, except by the most general sugges- 
tions, even if I were ever so much qualified to do it. But 
consider, in this matter of mental development, how natu- 
ral it is, and we may say certain, that every man's individual 
life is a picture of the world's life. Look at the natural 
traits of individual life. In childhood, docility — receiving 
impressions with little questioning of them, wilfulness and 
waywardness controlled by authority ; timidity, also — fears, 
natural or superstitious : in early manhood, the forming of 
opinions, the struggling with questions, the liability to be 
misled by false theories ; premature judgments, and pre- 
sumption and confidence, in the same proportion : in later 
manhood, a correction of those errors, a larger knowledge 
and experience, a settling down upon more simple and cer- 
tain bases of thought ; more caution, more modesty, more 
wisdom : in short, impressions for the first period, assump- 
tions for the second, solid results for the third / these are the 
natural steps of individual progress. They have been the 
steps of the ivorldh progress. These are the steps, indeed, 
which Augnste Comte has so laboriously traced out, under 
the denominations, of what he calls, the theologic era, the 
metaphysic era, and the era of the positive philosophy ; i. e., 
in other words, the ages of superstition, of theory or assump- 
tion, and of the observation of facts ; for, I think, his terms 
are new, rather than his ideas of progress. 

But let us look at the world 1 s periods. The first was 
that of superstitious obedience, to whatever was taught or 
established. It embraces the oldest Asiatic nations, together 
with the Egyptians, and, indeed, all the rudest tribes of men 
everywhere. Its grand characteristic is that of childlike 
and implicit acquiescence in the existing system, in the 
political or social order, as a Divine enactment. Whether 



234 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

that order was caste, or subjection to a priesthood, or to a 
patriarchal head, or to the king, it was never questioned. 
Kings were often slain by their rivals, but the people, in 
those earliest days, seldom rose against them. "We can hardly 
comprehend, at this day, that absolute obedience. And we 
must not confound it with rational obedience, which is one 
of the latest fruits of the highest culture. It was unreason- 
ing, instinctive obedience. And the lessons to be obeyed, 
extended to everything; to the daily action of life as 
well as to political relations. Men took their trade, 
their occupation, from their fathers. In India and Egypt, 
it was assigned to them by the law of caste ; but among all 
rude people, the same principle has prevailed, though not 
to the same extent. Then, in political relations, the chief- 
tain, the king was priest also ; and in that double character 
was regarded with unbounded awe, and had unbounded 
power. This was the childhood of the world. 

The next period begins with Greece, and embraces Rome 
and the whole of semi- civilized Europe in the middle ages. 
It is the period in which thought began to be free. It is 
the period of struggling theories ; about philosophy, politics, 
law, and the social relationships. Thales and Pythagoras 
— both of Phoenician origin, though born and brought up 
(about six centuries before the Christian era) in the great 
cities of Miletus and Samos — were the harbingers of this 
second period in the history of human thought ; but it burst 
forth in morning splendor in the schools of Socrates and 
Plato, and of Aristotle. Now one of the darkest problems 
in the history of thought, is the apparent declension in 
philosophy from the time of Plato and Aristotle to the time 
of Bacon ; a period of about twenty centuries. Platonism 
in the new Platonic schools of Rome and Alexandria, in the 
second and third centuries, died out into mysticism and 
pantheism. Aristotle's system arose and flourished in the 
eighth century, under the culture of Arabian philosophers ; 
and partly through the Arabian schools in Spain, and the 
fostering care of Charlemagne and Alfred, it attained, 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 235 

under the name of the scholastic philosophy, to a firm lodg- 
ment in the culture of Europe. It was less spiritual, less 
elevating than that of Plato ; yet it prevailed. It was full 
of irrational hypotheses, and barren syllogisms and subtil- 
ties ; more fitted to exercise human thought, than to lead it 
to any true knowledge. Why then did it prevail ? May 
we not fairly suggest, that it may have been better and 
safer for the human mind in that stage of its culture, than 
the philosophy of Plato ? Plato's philosophy, we see, was 
abused ; it declined into mysticism and pantheism ! Aristo- 
tle's, more formal and mechanical, held its place more firmly. 
And do we not see a type of this phase of the world-de- 
velopment, in our own individual progress ? Is there not 
a time in our mind's life, between youth and later manhood, 
when we are struggling, rather than attaining ; when the 
faculties, the tools of thought, are sharpening, rather than 
building ; or when their building is experimental rather 
than final ; when we are trying many things, many theories, 
and do not yet find the track to clear and settled conclu- 
sions. In politics, however, in the science of law, in ideas 
of social justice, there was, at the same time, a great prog- 
ress. And in this connection we must not forget that 
grand achievement — the separation of the temporal and 
spiritual powers.* The union of political and spiritual 
authority in the same hands, formed and established in the 
ancient world the most solid and impregnable despotism. 
Christianity set up a new thought in the world, that was 
to reign over kings and emperors. It was the power, not of 
an idol god, but of an omnipresent Divinity ; not of a cere- 
monial function, but of a God-obeying conscience. In the 
persons of the Christian priesthood, it separated itself from 
the temporal power, struggled with it, and at length gained 
the ascendency. When Pope Hildebrand, in 1077, sum- 
moned the Emperor of Germany, Henry YI., to Canossa, in 
the Apennines, and made him do penance on the cold moun- 
tain side for three days, before he would admit him to his 

* Comte, Philosophie Positive, 54th lecture. 



236 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

presence or give him absolution, the battle was fought and 
won. Doubtless the religious power in its separate form was 
enough abused, but its separation was a great step onward. 

The third great period in the history of human thought 
commenced with the sixteenth century. The revival of 
learning, the protest of Luther, the invention of printing, the 
discovery of America, nearly simultaneous, gave a new 
spring to men's minds, and philosophy partook of the gen- 
eral movement. Under the guidance of Bacon, Leibnitz, and 
their successors, it turned away from subtilties and the 
ories, to real knowledge, and to its foundation principles. 
For the last three centuries, then, the human mind, having 
struggled out from the cloud-land of the middle ages, has 
been advancing on firmer ground and in clearer light, and 
to more decided and substantial results. It is the manhood 
of the world. 

I am sensible that this discoursing is too abstract and 
cursory to be profitably pursued. But it may serve to con- 
vince you that there has been a progress in the highest 
regions of thought ; in that search for truth which touches 
the vital springs of all human welfare. 

Let me add a word on the progress of thought, as it ap- 
pears in the form of public sentiment. And let it be con- 
sidered that public, like individual opinion, will always be 
working itself out into expression, into action. ]STow the 
progress of public sentiment through ages, has manifested 
itself in a constantly increasing respect for freedom, for jus- 
tice, for humanity. Let us dwell upon this last point for a 
moment ; for it covers the whole ground. 

Civilization, says M. Guizot, embraces two elements, 
the improvement of society, and the improvement of the 
man ; and the question, he says, which is to be put to all 
events, is — What have they done for the one or the other? 
Of these two developments, he further asks, which is the 
end ; and which, the means ? Was the individual made to 
advance society, or society the individual % * And he quotes 

* Histoire de la Civilization en Europe, tome ii. p. 23, 21. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 237 

Royer Collard in favor of the latter view. Can there be 
any doubt abont it ? Of course the actual tendencies are 
reciprocal ; general culture helps individual ; the individual, 
in turn, helps society. But if any one asks which is the 
ultimate end, I say the culture of the individual soul. In- 
deed, what is the development, improvement, perfection, 
happiness of society, when analyzed, but that of individuals ? 
Societ}^, like humanity, is a mere abstraction ; only individ- 
uals have any actual being or fortune, weal or woe. Soci- 
ety is only a relation ; man is the substance. Society 
passes away ; man is immortal. The family, tribe, com- 
mune, nation, state, is instrumental ; man, final. Society 
can do nothing greater than to make noble and happy men. 
But men can do something greater than to make noble in- 
stitutions — to make themselves noble. It is beautiful to die 
for one's country ; but it is more beautiful, it is majestic, to 
die for the right — for the sense of right in the lonely and 
private heart. 

Now the progress of the world, of society, of freedom, 
of education, intelligence, literature, religion, has witnessed 
a gradual development of conscious individuality, of the 
worth of man, of the individual man. It may be traced 
down through successive institutions and ages.* Under the 
ancient despotisms, Assyrian and Egyptian, still more in 
China and India, the man was nothing. Society was strong ; 
but the man was nothing. Armies of hundreds of thousands 
of men, with terrible unity, cohesion and force, swept over 
the world ; still the individual man was nothing but a par- 
ticle of that destroying cloud. In the Roman time, man 
was nothing but for the state. The sole thought of paren- 
tal affection, yea, of the tenderest maternity, was, to rear 
children for the state. Christianity gave birth to individ- 
uality. Feudalism permitted the great idea to grow. Man 
became free, and learned more and more that he was a man. 
The consciousness of one's self has gone on developing ever 
since, till, in these days, it is tending in some instances to 

* To do this, was the favorite thought of Hegel in his Philosophy of History. 



238 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY 

isolation, to a sort of intellectual monachism, to fastidious 
peculiarities of thought and modes of speech, and almost to 
self-apotheosis. Its creed is a very short one : " I believe — 
in myself; " and its practice equally brief: " I will live, in, 
by, and for myself." 

From the History of Thought, the next step naturally is 
to the History of Institutions ; though they are closely con- 
nected, and cannot, in our consideration of them, be entirely 
separated. 

And here, religion, by every right, claims the first place ; 
by its dignity, its priority in time, and the extent of its in- 
fluence. 

This grand impress upon the world is a sublime testi- 
mony to human nature. Religion was the dominant thought 
of all the early ages. The sceptic, nay the atheist philoso- 
pher of history and humanity, has been obliged to take it 
into the very heart of his theory ; for no account can be 
given of the world, without it. But in the ancient world 
especially, religion reigned supreme. It was the shadow in 
every grove, the wind upon every shore, the waving harvest 
in every field ; the sunlit mountains were its burning al- 
tars ; the deep-sunken glens and caverns its haunted cham- 
bers ; its idols were in every house, its signet was upon 
every hearthstone; birth and burial, feast and fight it 
claimed for its own ; it was the consecration of marriage, 
the strength of government, the sanctitude of kingship ; it 
was the seal upon everything sacred ; upon every oath and 
covenant and bond in the world . Nay, and concerning the 
more modern ages, the ablest judge on the subject, M. 
Guizot, says, that " until the fifteenth century, we see in Eu- 
rope no general and powerful ideas, really acting upon the 
masses, but religious ideas." * " Yea," says Plutarch, 
who stood a little this side of the dividing line between the 
pagan and the Christian ages,f and thus belonged to our 
Christian era in time, though not in faith — " Yea, shouldst 
thou wander through the earth, thou mayest find cities 

* Civilization in Europe, p. 307. f Died about A. d. 120. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 239 

without walls, without a king, without houses, without coin, 
without theatre or gymnasium ; but never wilt thou behold 
a city without a god, without prayer, without oracle, with- 
out sacrifice. Sooner might a city stand without ground, 
than a state sustain itself without religion. This is the 
cement of all society, and the support of all legislation." * 

In religious ideas and institutions, it is hardly necessary 
to show that there has been a constant progress from the 
earliest ages ; but its steps have been more marked than is 
likely to be comprehended by the common and vague im- 
pression of the fact. The first form — I except, of course, 
from this account of the natural progress, the Hebrew sys- 
tem — the first form of religion that prevailed over the world 
was Fetichism ; a word derived from the Portuguese fetisso, 
meaning a block, worshipped as an idol. It prevailed over 
all Asia and in Egypt ; and was substantially the worship 
of nature. It was the worship of nature, or of idols, the 
monstrous births of nature ; for the idolatry of these coun- 
tries is widely to be distinguished from that of Greece. So 
gross were the Oriental ideas, that the idol was sometimes 
chained by the leg to his place in the temple, lest he should 
leave it, and desert his worshippers. The idols were ugly 
and misshapen, often huge and monstrous ; like the statue 
of Nebuchadnezzar, fifty cubits (about one hundred feet) 
high, or like the colossal Sphinx at Gize in Egypt, one hun- 
dred and fifty feet long, and sixty-three feet high. The 
Sphinx, you know, was in the form of a human head on the 
body of a lion — humanity, as one has said, looking out from 
animalism. Indeed, the Egyptian, as a worship of animal 
life, was an advance upon the mere worship of material 
nature ; and was an approach — was a " looking out," per- 
haps we may say — to the Grecian development. This, the 
Grecian development, was the second step, and was the 
worship of deified human attributes; the worship, that is to 
say, of the gods under these representations / for we are al- 
ways to understand this by the worship, as it is called, of 

* Quoted from the Biblical Repository, vol. ii. p. 259. 



240 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

outward forms. The Greek worship formed its symbols of 
the Divinity, by an idealizing, not of nature, but of human- 
ity. That is to say, it was distinctively this ; for much, 
doubtless, of the old Oriental worship was left ; it is always 
to be remembered that much of the spirit of every previous, 
flows into the succeeding age. The Greeks, then, deified 
humanity ; the most illustrious men they had known, repre- 
sented their idea of God ; and they made their idols in the 
most beautiful human forms. It was a step onward. Next, 
the Komans abjured idolatry entirely. This trait the better 
prepared them for the further and last great religious step 
in the world, the introduction of Christianity. Christianity 
has presided over all the best culture in the world, since its 
advent. It has itself passed through successive stages of 
development and improvement. That is to say, its princi- 
ples have been better and better understood. 

But before speaking more particularly of Christianity, 
let us turn a moment to consider the place which the He- 
brew religion has held in the world. 

There is scarcely anything that is so urgently demanded 
in our literature, as a work which will justly discriminate 
and fairly present the claims of the Hebrew system to our 
attention and veneration. The Bible is regarded by a part 
of the world, as a literal record of the words of God — a 
theory which precludes all free appreciation; and by an- 
other part, as a book of old and useless stories, and formal 
and antiquated writings — a presumption that altogether 
overlooks its true character. For here is a book that stands 
out, amidst the darkness of antiquity, in bold relief and 
unchallenged superiority, to everything around it. Here, 
in the first place, is the most valid history of the earliest 
known period of the world ; of the time before the flood. 
Here, in the second place, is a record of the most liberal 
polity of ancient times. There was nothing among sur- 
rounding nations to compare with the freedom of the He- 
brew State. Here, in the third place, is the sublimest 
poetry of the ancient, if not, indeed, of any time. Some 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 241 

of the ablest critics have agreed to assign to the Book of 
Job and the writings of Isaiah, a place, not only above the 
Indian Mahabarat, but above the Iliad itself. And in the 
fourth place, here are writings, of such lofty spiritualism 
and devotion, that they not only leave all- contemporary 
records far behind, but have been the food of piety and the 
language of prayer, among the most enlightened nations, to 
the present day. Compare the prayers in the Zend-Avesta 
and the Iliad with those of David — and they are all nearly 
contemporaneous — and you must feel that David soared far 
above them all. 

Such a system of lofty spiritualism, moral wisdom, and 
civil polity could not fail to have some effect upon the sur- 
rounding nations. Indeed, M. Auguste Comte himself, 
though far enough from recognizing any element of super- 
naturalism in the Hebrew system, is disposed to ascribe to 
it, the initiative and leading part in the great transition of 
the world from polytheism to the worship of one God.* The 
position of the Hebrew State favored such an influence. It 
stood in the centre of the most ancient civilizations ; with 
Assyria on the one hand, and Phoenicia and Egypt on the 
other. At a later day, it was a central province of the 
Roman Empire. And, as if its office were meant to be dif- 
fusion, the Hebrew State was never at any time, a locked-up 
and impregnable kingdom. It was frequently overrun by 
the armies of Egypt and Assyria and Home ; many times 
they desolated and despoiled the Holy Temple ; yet they 
found there no idol nor idol-worship, but only a simple altar 
to the one, invisible God. They dashed it in pieces, indeed, 
with idolatrous rage ; but they must have felt the sublimity 
of the symbol and the worship. So little, in truth, did the 
Hebrew theocracy exist for its own sake ; so much for the 
lifting up of a standard of pure theism to the nations, as 
the Hebrews themselves were often told, that they were 
reared as a, people in Egypt, and were more than once car- 
ried into captivity into Assyria. Not for national aggran- 
*Philosophie Positive, vol. v., p. 290, 291. 

16 



242 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

dizement did the Hebrew State exist, but for the diffusion 
of higher truths than the world had elsewhere attained, and 
thus to prepare the way for a still higher and purer re- 
ligion. 

This was Christianity. The crisis of its advent and the 
consequences must occupy some attention, even in the most 
cursory notice of the world's progress. 

The old religions were worn out. The Asiatic and Egyp- 
tian "worship of nature had given place to the Grecian 
mythology, and to this had succeeded the Roman latitudi- 
narianism, and indifference. Though abjuring idolatry, Rome 
admitted the gocls of all nations indifferently into her pan- 
theon, and her philosophers believed in none. The observa- 
tion of Cicero is familiar to you, that the very priests could 
not help laughing in one another's faces, as they celebrated 
the sacred rites. All faith was fast dying out of the world, 
and where faith is dead, nothing lives. 

Then it was that Christianity came, as we may say, to 
the world's rescue : and many circumstances favored its in- 
troduction. I do not choose to say, as most writers do, that 
Providence especially prepared these circumstances ; they 
arose in a natural way ; the facilities of communication 
opened by the extent of the Roman Empire, language and 
law, the prevalence of peace, the failure of polytheism, and 
the despondency of philosophy, all favored the new religion. 
Occasion was taken from these circumstances, we may 
doubtless say : it was " the fulness of time." But what I 
wish especially to mark is the crisis in civilization. Civil- 
ized society, to which the rescue came, was about to sink 
under the weight of its own inherent vices. The life of the 
world had been gathered up in Rome, to one central point ; 
the limbs had been drained to fill the heart to repletion ; 
and now that destruction threatened it from very plethora 
and consequent gangrene and corruption ; now, too, that 
the Goth and the Yandal were coming to pierce it, that 
mighty heart was about to burst in deluges of blood. It 
had been an awful problem for any philosopher of those 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 243 

days, any Cicero or Plotinus, to consider, 7ww, from that dark 
and mysterious abyss into which humanity was descending, 
it should emerge — how, and in what form and character. 
But there was a power coming to help and to rescue, of 
which the philosophers knew nothing. Christianity de- 
scended with the world into that awful abyss, where the 
wild torrents and stormy winds of human passion were 
struggling together in the night-brooding chaos ; and that 
heavenly Guardian and Restorer brought it up again to 
stand on a firm basis. For then it was that the spiritual 
powers, the dread sanctions, and the imposing ceremonies of 
the Christian religion, awed the rude invader. Then it was, 
that its mitred bishops clothed themselves with the office 
of the civil magistrate, to restrain the lawless. Then it was, 
that its monasteries preserved the treasures of the ancient 
learning. Then it was, above all, that the one great idea 
arose in the world, to reign over all after ages — the Christ, 
the divinest being that ever appeared in the world, and the 
most human; divine to inspire reverence, human to win 
confidence ; and suffering, in such wise, as to touch the springs 
of love and pity through all time. And it did touch the 
hearts of men. It transformed many from earthly baseness, 
into confessors, saints, and martyrs. And it is a circum- 
stance to which I wish to call your particular attention, that 
the lives of these holy men became the popular literature 
of the world, from the sixth to the eighth century. The 
profane literature had disappeared ; and these Lives of the 
Saints took its place. The Collection of Bolland, a Belgian 
Jesuit, with its continuation, consists of fifty-three volumes 
of these Lives. I wjsh I had time to recite to you some 
of these legends of the early Christian saints. They were 
often extravagant ; but they contained some of the most 
beautiful pictures of heroism, self-sacrifice, and saintly pity 
and care for the poor and suffering, that can be found in 
any literature of any age. And these, amidst the wild 
license and cruelty of barons and robbers, were the good 
Christian legends that circulated among the people.* 

* Guizot, Histoire de la Civilization en France, 16e et lV e Iecons. 



244 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

And thus, amidst the corruptions and vices of succeeding 
times, Christianity has ever stood forth as the image of 
purity and goodness. It has not been, as in the ancient 
heathen time, when the religion was no better than the 
morals of the people. Ever in the Christian ages, there has 
been an ideal, drawing on to something better. And thus 
Christianity has ever been impressing itself more and more, 
upon Governments, upon social institutions, and upon art. 
It has made Governments more just and tolerant. It has 
built hospitals and asylums on the sites of voluptuous baths 
and bloody amphitheatres. It has formed worshipping 
congregations, built for them temples for meditative thought, 
for instruction — a thing unknown to other religions ; an 
institution, indeed, of almost inappreciable value. And 
what but the Christian idea, has been imaged forth in the 
architecture of Europe ; in its solemn temples, its majestic 
cathedrals, its time-hallowed universities ? And what is it, 
that is spread in forms of living beauty upon the walls of 
Italy? It is the great Christian idea. The moving inci- 
dents of the Christian story, and the sublime virtues of 
Christian confessors and martyrs, are there portrayed before 
the passing generations. 

I cannot dwell longer upon the institutions that have 
advanced the world, and must come, in the third place, 
to actions and events. Ideas, institutions, actions — this is 
the order of my discourse ; and I am obliged to content 
myself with the mention of only some instances under each 
head. 

As I shall pass from the agencies employed in the 
world's progress, to consider in my nest and last lecture, the 
actual steps of it, I shall reserve several points under the 
head of action, for the places into which they naturally and 
chronologically fall ; and I shall take up in this lecture, only 
some of those movements of a general character which have 
occurred occasionally and indifferently in all ages. 

The first is Colonization. The great, peaceful colonizers 
of the world — for the military colonization practised by 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 215 

Rome and Russia does not come under our present view — 
have been Phoenicia and Greece, England and Holland : 
Phoenicia having had colonies in Spain and Northern Africa ; 
Greece, in Asia Minor and Southern Italy ; and England 
and Holland, in the East Indies and in America. This 
swarming of the hives of men, has always been attended 
with certain advantages to the cause of civilization and 
progress. Heeren says, " it is from the bosom of colonies 
that civil liberty, nearly in all ages, has set forth." * It is 
easy to see that colonization is likely to be an emancipation 
from many prejudices and many inconvenient usages at 
home. Men, in a long-established order of society, become 
weary of burdensome and cramping institutions, long before 
they can get rid of them. They have improved ideas which 
they desire to put in practice; and when founding new 
communities, they are certain to do it. Our own forefathers, 
indeed, came to this country with that distinct purpose ; and 
in consequence, they abolished all state religion, all orders of 
nobility, and all irresponsible government. 

The next great movement which I shall mention, is inva- 
sion. By this I do not mean international war, to settle 
some temporary quarrel, but those immense tides in human 
affairs, by which either barbarism has poured itself down 
upon the seats of civilization to settle itself there, or civil- 
ization has invaded barbarism to uproot and supplant it. 
Of the first kind, was the invasion of India and Persia from 
the central mountain land of Asia, and of the Roman 
Empire from Northern Europe and Tartary. Of the second, 
are the remarkable movements of the present day — of Rus- 
sia upon Tartary and Circassia, of France upon Northern 
Africa, and of England upon Southern Asia. 

Here opens an awful page in human affairs, written in 
blood and blackened with many atrocities and miseries, and 
we must pause to consider it. And everything depends 
upon our standpoint. If we demand some artificial, best 
culture for the human race ; if we permit ourselves to say 

*Historial Researches — Asiatic Nations, vol. i., p. 303. 



246 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

— why was it not carried forward in civilization, with the 
fewest blunders, troubles, and sufferings, and all accord- 
ing to some factitious ideal of our own? — we shall meet 
with a confounding problem. But let us say, here is a race 
made as it is made, and, as we are bound to think, wisely 
made, and of necessity left mainly to work out its own 
way ; and from this standpoint, what do we see ?' Nations, 
in fertile realms, like Persia and Italy, grow in wealth, com- 
fort and luxury, and sink into indulgence, licentiousness, 
baseness of every sort. Every tendency is downward, and 
there is no internal power or life to bring them up. Injus- 
tice, cruelty, and corruption cry to heaven for their destruc- 
tion ; and moral debility, waste, and woe have left no argu- 
ment on earth for their continuance. The cup of iniquity 
and misery is full ; and the rudest barbarism is better and 
happier, than this effete, worn-out, blighted civilization. 

Then, from the founts of primeval nature, are collected 
the mountain streams, that pour a new life through the cor- 
rupted channels of the old society. The streams are turbid 
and violent indeed ; but after the first rush is over, and they 
have swept the choking filth from the old channels, they 
become in time calmer and purer. The elements that com- 
pose the new civilization, are better than the old. In fact, 
the better part of the old are retained. For the barbarian 
cannot understand the effeminacy, the sloth, the luxury, the 
artificial vices into whose presence lie comes ; but the vis- 
ible improvements, the comfortable dwellings, the useful 
arts, and even the institutions and laws, he, in a measure, 
comprehends and partly adopts. 

He is improved. But now at length, he too sinks into 
debility and corruption, and is prepared to share the fate of 
his predecessors. And certainly, if this terrible revolution 
in the wheel of fate, by which another invasion is to cast 
him out and sweep him away — if this, I say, were but mere 
repetition, without any progress, the problem of all human 
history would be as dark as ever. But the contrary is the 
undoubted fact. The experiment is not in vain. The new 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 247 

civilizations that arise are ever better, and have been grow- 
ing better through all ages. 

Let us now turn to the counter movement of civilization 
upon barbarism. The most remarkable instance of this is 
the establishment of the British power in India. It is the 
most' stupendous spectacle of an age, full of wonders. With- 
in a century past, more than a hundred millions of barba- 
rous people — the number is now said to amount to 150,000- 
000 — a population greater than that of the Roman Empire 
in the time of Claudius — spreading over twenty-seven de- 
grees of latitude,* and almost as many of longitude, from 
Cape Comorin to the Himalaya Mountains, and from Persia 
to the Ganges — has come under the ascendency of the 
highest civilization in Europe. Commenced by a company 
of merchants, and carried on by a people from the other 
side of the world, nothing could have been more uninten- 
tional or improbable than the result of this movement. 
That in this stupendous march of events, great suffering, 
great wrong has been inflicted ; that princes and nations 
have been trampled under foot, cannot be denied. And 
yet it has not been a course of mere reckless and ruthless 
conquest. Many of the Indian princes have been taken 
under British protection at their own instance ;, many others 
have met with subjugation as the reward of unjust aggres- 
sions on their part. And the English are not a people to 
let oppression in their name, go unchallenged ; as the trial 
of Warren Hastings, Mr. Fox's East India Bill, and many 
other parliamentary interpositions, show. They have labored, 
at the same time, to suppress many abuses and to spread 
education among the people. 

The effects must be immense, must be incalculable ; and 
they must be good. For two thousand years India has 
made hardly a step forward ; bound in the chains of politi- 
cal despotism, of a religion at once dreamy, cruel, and de- 
grading, and the fatal institution of caste. All this is des- 
tined to give place to Christian order, law, religion, and 
* From 8° to 35°. 



248 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

society. Where Alexander with his armies, and Mohammedan 
conquerors, and Tamerlane with his Mongol hosts, swept 
like a destroying cloud, leaving behind them the same sterile 
immobility and death which they found — in that land a new 
realm is rising, with the seeds of a new life in it. 

Meanwhile England is spreading her influence far, Jooth 
to the east and west of India. Already she meditates a 
land route by railroad from the Mediterranean to Hindoos- 
tan, through the plains of the Euphrates and Tigris ; and 
that fallow ground of the old Assyrian Empires, which has 
lain waste for ages, is to be turned into a fruitful field, busy 
with thronging life, by the ploughshare of modern civiliza- 
tion. England seems destined to regenerate entire Southern 
Asia, from the Mediterranean to the China Sea. What a 
magnificent mission for that Island Queen ! 

There is one further topic, to which, but for fear of ex- 
hausting your patience, I should give some space in this 
lecture : and that is political Revolutions, or more exactly, 
popular resistance to arbitrary power. Insurrections of the 
people against the government are seldom aroused without 
a cause ; when successful, they are usually followed by ben- 
eficial changes ; and even when they fail, they often do 
good service to the cause of liberty and justice. It is to this 
last point, as the darkest in the case, that I shall direct your 
attention in close. 

The burden of the case, so to speak, usually rests, as we 
survey it in history, upon the sad fate of conspicuous indi- 
viduals ; for they are ordinarily the victims. Ever since 
history began the record of human struggles for justice and 
for progress, we see that the rack and the scaffold, the mar- 
ket place and the battle field, have been stained with the 
blood of the free and strong hearted, of patriots and martyrs, 
of men who died nobly, because they could not live ignobly. 
To any high and heroic sensibility, it is the saddest and 
most agonizing spectacle in the world. 

But the moving story, that stirs our blood with indigna- 
tion and pity when we read it, does not end here. No, 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 249 

there is another account to be made of deeds like these. 
Haughty power has its day, and martyred heroism has its 
day — ay, and it sets in darkness and blood ; but, that day 
past, and they change places forever. Forever hallowed 
and dear to all mankind is that martyred heroism. Every 
drop of innocent blood that ever tyranny and injustice have 
shed, has been sprinkled upon the heart of the world, as 
upon an altar, to cause the flame of indignant virtue to 
mount higher. No such weapon was ever formed on earth 
to sustain the right, no such weapon to beat down the 
wrong, as the battered sword of martyred patriotism. Sepa- 
rated from all earthly dross in the furnace of tyranny, forged 
on the anvil of hard injustice and oppression, and tempered 
in holy blood, it is lifted up as a standard before the eyes 
of all mankind. 

Nor let it be thought that things like these, are buried 
in obscurity ; as the tyrant would have the names of his vic- 
tims. Some of us perhaps, never heard of the Duke of 
Alva and of the Count Egmont — the one, the brutal Span- 
ish commander in the Low Countries ; whose cruelties were 
such, that he drove a hundred thousand people from their 
country, and toasted that he had caused the public execution 
of eighteen thousand persons ; and the other, a young noble- 
man — the Count Egmont — otherwise to have been unknown 
in history, whom he sent to the scaffold : but all Germany, 
all Europe has heard of them ; of the one for execration, of 
the other for pity ; the pen of genius has written their 
names on everlasting tablets ; in history, in ballads, in dra- 
matic story, they are known, and will be, to the end of the 
world. 

But we all have heard of the heroic Wallace of Scot- 
land. From indignant resistance to the English soldiery 
stationed in his country, he was led to armed assertion of 
her rights \ and after many daring actions, he was defeated 
through the jealousy of the Scottish nobles, and by the com- 
mand of Edward I. was beheaded and quartered in the 
English capital. With grief and indignation we read the 



250 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

story. We sympathize with the lonely sufferer, torn from 
his country and his home, and sinking to his doom amidst 
exulting crowds of enemies. But there is another award — 
far other than that of the English court and the London 
of that day. Suppose that behind that hostile crowd had 
risen an amphitheatre, on which were seated a hundred 
thousand spectators, all execrating the deed, and lauding 
and glorifying the victim of arbitrary power. He, alas! 
saw no such majestic amphitheatre, but only murderous foes 
around him. Yet how feebly would that crowded theatre 
represent the verdict of posterity ! How do the ranks of 
ages on ages rise, to take the victim's part ; ay, to the end 
of time — to celebrate, through all time, with song and psean 
and dramatic scene and historic story, his nobleness and 
heroism ! Yes, it is such, in their melancholy but glorious 
fate, that fire the hearts of millions, with new indignation 
at wrong, with new enthusiasm for the right. It is such, 
in their melancholy but glorious fate, that are the noblest 
teachers of all mankind. Chairs of philosophy, pulpits, 
forums, thrones, sink to the dust before them. 

The difference between the faint approval which contem- 
poraries give to virtue, and the decisive and loud award of 
posterity, is strikingly evinced by a passage in Herodotus, 
concerning Aristides. Herodotus was born in the very year 
of the banishment of Aristides from Athens— i. e., 484 years 
before the Christian era. Speaking of that event, Herodo- 
tus uses this language : " He was banished by a vote of 
the people, although my information induces me to consider 
him as the most upright and excellent of his fellow citi- 
zens." * " My information induces me to consider him " — 
is the cautious language of the time : while the ages have 
rung with the title of the " Just," appropriated without 
doubt or hesitation to the name of Aristides ; while every 
language, every literature, every writing of human speech, 
from the schoolboy's theme to the sage's thesis, has repeated 
the eulogium ; and while, moreover, the name of Themis- 

* Book viii., sec. *79. 



ON THE PKOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 251 

tocles, the adversary of Aristides, the most successful man of 
his day — proclaimed by all Greece the greatest general at the 
battle of Salamis, but worldly wise, wily, and unprincipled 
— while that name, I say, wins no good verdict from pos- 
terity. There stands the little day's vote of Athens, on one 
side ; arjd the verdict of sixty generations of mankind on 
the other. 

It has been thought wrong, to desire martyrdom ; but I 
can think of no death so much to be coveted, as, after having 
lived a heroic life, to consummate all in one bright example, 
which, at no more cost than an hour's pain, shall send light 
and power through the world. This is heaven's commission 
to suffering innocence. This is heaven's vindication of its 
bitter pain. The lowliest sigh from the valleys of Piedmont, 
is echoed from distant continents. One glance from the 
dying martyr's eye, flashes through the ages. Small cost 
for such stupendous purchase ! Little to do and to suffer, 
for so much to follow ! That little done, is worth the world 
beside. Let us not despair at the dark pictures which his- 
tory spreads before us. From that darkness is the brightest 
flashing out of heroic virtue. In the dark cloud is embo- 
somed a splendor, that outshines the common light of day. 
Ay, and but for the gathering storm, that sometimes closes 
around the noblest men that the world ever saw, their vir- 
tues had never been signalized nor clothed with honor and 
beauty for the admiration of all mankind. 



LECTUEE XII. 

HISTORIC VIEW OF HUMANITY: HUMAN PROGRESS— THE 
STEPS OF IT. 

I have considered in my last lecture, some of the great 
agencies, by which human progress has been promoted. I 
propose now to trace the steps of this progress. A few pre- 
liminary observations may prepare us to take a juster view 
of it. 

There are difficulties, in many minds, about the world's 
life, which do not press equally upon individual life. Many 
feel that in their personal experience and lot, moral laws are 
revealed, and that things are tending to moral issues ; that 
there really is a high purpose in their own life. " But to 
what end," they say, " have the wild, warring, slaughtering, 
struggling nations lived ? This wide waste and desolation 
which history spreads before us — this confused turmoil of 
follies and crimes — what necessity has there been for it? 
"What good has come of it ? " Such is the view which 
they take of the past life of the human race, that they are 
almost ready to feel, in the spirit of the Manichaean philoso- 
phy, as if the domain of the world had been divided be- 
tween good and evil spirits ; ay, and had been given to the 
evil more than the good. Nay, there are those who say 
that man is but an animal, sprung from the ape; and 
stamped with animalism in his whole embryotic develop- 
ment 

Now suppose it were true, that humanity is a develop- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 253 

ment from animalism. Yet even upon this theory, as upon 
every view of the world, one fact is found to be involved in 
the whole history of humanity; and that is the fact of prog- 
ress. Everywhere, from the beginning, through all ages, 
there has been progress. If, indeed, the race had been run- 
ning down, or if it had stood stationary amidst its struggles 
and sufferings, then must we have given it up to the scorn 
of the satirist or of the false philosopher. Then had our 
problem found no solution. But progress redeems all, pays 
for all ; shows that in all things, however dark and mysteri- 
ous, there has been a good intent and tendency, a good 
Providence, ruling all, 

" From seeming evil still educing good, 
And better thence again, and better still, 
In infinite progression." 

This, it is our present design to trace and show. 

And we may observe that this order of progress has presid- 
ed over successive productions and races on earth, oefore the 
appearance of man. There were, unknown ages ago, mon- 
strous amphibious creatures ; nameless when they lived, for 
there was none on earth to name them ; and it has been left 
to the present age to classify them — the ichthyosaurus, the 
megatherium, the megalonyx — names that seem monstrous 
and fabulous like themselves ; but they have lived. Then 
appeared more perfect animals ; then man. The vegetable 
products, too, kept pace with the needs of animal life. 
When those amphibious monsters were seventy feet long, 
when there were such swarms and clouds of insects, that 
their fossil remains formed quarries and mountains of rock, 
then our common fern and brake shot up seventy and eighty 
feet high. Not till man was brought upon the scene, per- 
haps, were created " the grass, the herb yielding seed, and the 
fruit-tree, yielding fruit after his kind." And Mr. Agassiz 
says, that no fossil remains of roses are found, of a date 
prior to the advent of man. Let me add in passing, that 
these discoveries of modern science do not conflict with the 
Mosaic account of the creation ; since, in a just construe- 



254: QN THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTLNY. 

tion, the " days " there spoken of, are not to be taken for 
periods of twenty-four hours ; certainly not the first period,' 
which was before the sun is represented as measuring the day ; 
but for a term of indefinite length ; during which the earth 
was " without form and void ; " not yet prepared and beau- 
tified for the abode of man. 

But the important observation is, that in all progress, the 
past has ever been preparing for the future ; and in the prog- 
ress of rational beings, that the future is ever borrowing- 
wisdom from the past. Tradition, history, experiment, are 
ever spreading before mankind the facts, from which they 
are perpetually drawing almost unconscious conclusions. 
With the philosophic observer, however, they are not un- 
conscious, but plainly traced out. The work which John 
Adams wrote in defence of our political Constitution and 
for the guidance of our Revolutionary times, was founded 
altogether upon the experience of nations. In matters of 
practical wisdom, it is only by experience that we truly 
know anything ; quantum sumus, seimus ; and only so it is, 
that the world knows or can know. It is striking to see, 
how one political truth after another, slowly rises out of the 
bosom of past ages of experience ; first, that the people 
must share the government, to make it safe and just ; and 
with this conviction, falls the divine right of kings : next, 
that the people's interest in the government, must be ex- 
pressed through representation, through suffrage ; and with 
this, sinks a hereditary nobility : then, on some experience 
of the representative system, that majorities may tyrannize ; 
and the sanctity of numbers begins to be called in question, 
the rights of minorities to be insisted on, and the necessity 
asserted, of intelligence, of education ; nay, more, of 
virtue, of mutual regard, of reverence for the Supreme 
Lawgiver. 

Thus great principles take their place with us, as familiar 
truths ; and we almost forget whence they have come, and 
what they have cost. Our commonest beliefs are the fruit 
of ages of experiment. They are familiar, and we imagine 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 255 

that they were easily acquired. We cannot look " to the 
rock whence they were hewn, nor to the hole of the pit 
whence they were digged." We think them intuitions ; but 
the truth is, the steps of centuries have led to them ; the 
pathway of generations has been opened, through moun- 
tains and through deserts, through flood and fire, to bring 
down to us the precious heritage. 

Yet further, I must pray you, not to look at the material 
in this world alone, but at the spiritual yet more. Not as 
a dull, obstinate, intractable world, must we see it, but as 
God's ever-renewed and instant work ; not as a mass of 
matter and sense and corruption, but as penetrated all 
through and forever with spiritual rays ; not as darkness 
and gloom, chaos and night and storm, but as the theatre 
and story of a heavenly order ; not, if I may say so, as if it 
were that dull, familiar place which we call the world ; for 
which we have no respect because it is familiar ; as the 
husbandman unwisely has none for his farm, because he has 
always trodden it and toiled upon it ; but rather should we 
look upon this world, as some vast repository of life, some 
fair planet, rolling through the heavens, and bearing, midst 
light and shade, midst change and struggle, midst varying 
forms of development — Celtic, Saxon, Slavonic, Gothic, and 
African — its infinite burden of human joy and sorrow : 
concerning which we would know, as far as we may know, 
the divine history of God's providence over it. 

But there is one further preliminary point, to which in 
this connection I wish more particularly to draw your at- 
tention ; and that is, that the progress of the world has been 
a purpose and a plan above all human sagacity ; inasmuch 
as it has been carried forward by man, while acting in total 
unconsciousness of any such instrumentality. 

It has been justly observed, that in some views, animal 
instinct is a clearer proof of Divine direction, than human 
reason. Reason acts for itself. Within a certain sphere, it 
seems to act independently of the Power that made it. In- 
stinct, on the contrary, is the mere vehicle of an intention 



256 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

acting through, it. Unconscious tendencies in human na- 
ture, bear a similar character. And it is by these mainly 
that the world has been advanced. Men, nations, genera- 
tions, have not purposely combined to secure its progress. 
"No grand council, amphictyonic or ecclesiastic, Grecian or 
Roman, ever sat down and solemnly resolved that the world 
should improve. If there was such a design from the be- 
ginning, and if it has been steadily kept in view, it has 
come from a thought behind all, and above all ; it has been 
God's design, and not man's. And in point of fact, it has 
been a purpose, not of man's, but of God's creation ; it has 
been a purpose, aided, as we Christians believe, by Divine 
interposition ; it has been, as I have said, a purpose accom- 
plished by man while acting in total ignorance of it ; and it 
has been a purpose, too, accomplished in spite of man. 

But it was especially of human unconsciousness in this 
matter, that I proposed to sj)eak. A French writer, M. 
Hello,* has devoted an entire work to the illustration of this 
point, in the history of France. He contemplates the ele- 
ments of national progress, as social, territorial, and political. 
Thus under the first head, he says, that the gradually in- 
creasing freedom of the mass of the people, the circumstan- 
ces that aided it, the pecuniary needs of kings which east 
them upon the help of the people, the means provided by 
which the cities bought their privileges; and hence the 
rights of property, the value of labor, and the increasing 
dignity of labor — that all this did not come from any design 
of man, but from God. Then again, with regard to the 
territorial element — to hold together an immense empire 
like France, he says, some principle, some power was ne- 
cessary, some permanent bond of union. What should it 
be ? Perhaps there was no other possible in that country, 
but a metropolitan city ; the centre from which should radi- 
ate the great routes to the extremity of the kingdom ; to 
which everything should be subordinate ; to which all the 
world should resort. Such is the great central city of that 

* Philosophie de l'histoire de France. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 257 

empire ; and when it is said that "Paris is France," the im- 
portance of this may be more than its import in the com- 
mon speech of men. I have sometimes felt, for myself, that 
this relation of the imperial city was a great hardship to 
the provincial towns and districts ; but I confess that this 
view of it has put a different aspect upon the matter. But 
what has given to the central city this preeminence ? Not 
the intention of those who founded it, but the course of 
events, the force of circumstances — in other words, the prov- 
idence of God. A similar course of observations conducts 
the writer to a like conclusion with regard to the political 
element, the government ; which has been gradually changed 
and improved by struggles between the king and nobles 
and people, mainly of a personal character, and having little 
reference to the general good. " Modern Europe," says M. 
Guizot, " is born of the struggles of different classes of soci- 
ety." Society has wrought out these changes ; but society 
did not know what it was about. 

This view, which M. Hello takes of his country's his- 
tory, is a good, a religious, and you will think perhaps, a 
somewhat remarkable view of things, for a French philoso- 
pher ; and I was willing to spread it before you. 

But the same view may be extended to the entire his- 
tory of the world. Its progress has been carried forward 
by many agencies that were unconscious of their high mis- 
sion. 

He who discovered the mariner's compass, he who in- 
vented the art of printing, they who perfected the steam 
engine, little thought, perhaps, what instruments they were 
putting into the hands of humanity, for advancing its great 
end. Each one developed his own genius, followed his own 
taste in his individual sphere ; in his privacy, he held the 
thread of inventive thought ; in his humble workshop, he 
pursued his task ; but the eye of Providence looked upon 
that work, and saw those narrow walls burst asunder, and 
the wide world, pervaded, illuminated, revolutionized by 
17 



258 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

the ingenuity of that dreaming recluse — a Gutenberg or 
Faust, a Fitch or Fulton, a Watt or Arkwright ! 

In like manner, science has owed its triumphs mainly, 
to the simple love of knowledge, to single-hearted enthusi- 
asm. But the secrets of nature which it has unfolded, the 
unsuspected powers which it has developed from the earth, 
and the wisdom which it has drawn from the skies, have 
united to bear the world onward, though Newton, u child- 
like sage," and Davy, torch bearer in the dark earth-mines, 
thought of but little, perhaps, besides their studies. 

And so it has been with men of genius, those masters of 
human thought, that they have labored, not for influence, 
but for utterance — not for fame, but for truth. Genius is the 
grandest power on earth ; for in its highest form it is reli- 
gious as well as intellectual ; and yet it has been well said, 
that it is as remarkable for its unconsciousness as for its 
energy. The eloquent thought, the epic story, the life- 
imaging drama, have come from depths of self-development, 
far beneath all calculation of results. 

And why has not thought terminated in itself? "Why 
has it not ministered only to its own improvement, died in 
its own bosom ? Why are the noblest emanations of human 
genius, running on glorious errands through the earth, and 
to the ends of the world ? Is it not evident that God has 
made man thus to act on man, for the general enlightening 
and advancement? If the imperial minds in this magnifi- 
cent empire of thought, were conscious of their appointment 
and mission, then the plan and the intent were plain ; but 
how much more striking is it, when just in proportion to 
their efficiency, has been their tmconsciousness of the glori- 
ous ministration for which they are raised up ! 

But it is time that I should proceed, as I proposed, to 
take a brief survey of the actual course of things, the steps 
of human progress. 

The first two thousand years are very dark, in every 
sense ; whether as history to be studied, or problem, to be 
solved. A wild wandering over the earth, as far as we can 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 259 

judge — men nomadic — hunters, shepherds ; no civilization, 
at least, capable of making any record of itself. 

The infant school of the world had rude teachers — cold 
and hunger and nakedness and need and peril were its teach- 
ers. The early cosmogonies represented the earth, when it 
first became the abode of man, as a scene of disorder and 
misery. Diodorus the Sicilian speaks of the trees, plants, 
animals, and man himself, as springing from the mud warmed 
by the sun, and pictures the first men as brutish and weak. 
Heraclitus, according to Plutarch, imagined the original 
habitable earth to have been but a mass of cinders, left by 
volcanic fires. Plutarch himself gives his opinion in the 
touching picture which he draws, of a man of the earliest 
period, addressing those of later ages : " Oh ! how are you 
cherished of the gods," he says, " you who live now ! How 
fortunate is your time ! The fertile earth yields you a thou- 
sand fruits ; all nature is engaged but in giving you delights ; 
but our birthtime was mournful and sterile ; the world was 
so new, that we were in want of everything ; the air was 
not pure; the sun was obscured; the rivers overflowed 
their banks ; all was marsh and thicket and forest ; the 
fields were not cultivated ; our misery was extreme ; we 
had neither inventions nor inventors ; our hunger was never 
appeased ; we tore the limbs of wild animals to devour 
them, when w e could find neither moss nor bark ; and if 
we found an acorn, we danced around the oak, chanting 
the praises of the earth ; we had no other fetes nor rejoic- 
ings but these ; and all the rest of our life was trouble and 
poverty and sadness." * 

But let us leave this period of the world's infancy, which 
is indeed, as you see it in the historic charts, covered with 
clouds ; concerning which we can offer nothing but conjec- 
tures ; and come at once to our proper starting point — the 
earliest period of recorded history. We can trace no proper 
history of the world but in the form of nationalities ; and 
we know nothing of nations earlier than the Chinese, the 

*See Boullanger — Antiquite Devoilee, torn. L, p. 195, 196. 



260 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

Indians of Hindoostan, the Persians and the Egyptians ; nor 
anything of them earlier than about the year 2000 of the 
Mosaic era. 

In the survey which I am about to take of known epochs 
and of distinct nationalities, the points to which I wish to 
invite your attention are these : that every great step which 
the world has taken, has been a manifest improvement upon 
the past, and a manifest preparation for further progress ; 
that at every great step, the world has paused and gained a 
foothold, in which it has rallied the energies of the past, to 
throw them into the fortunes oi the future ; that every great 
era of civilization, in other words, has presented these two 
remarkable facts — it has received and collected the improve- 
ments of the preceding era, its political forms, its laws, phi- 
losophies, theologies, literatures ; it has carried them to the 
highest point it was able ; and then it has cast them into 
the bosom of the future.* Thus improvement has passed 
on : from Asia and Egypt to Greece, from Greece to Rome, 
from Rome to the feudal forms of Central Europe, and from 
Central or Continental, to Western Europe, and to America. 

The childhood of civilization then, was in Southern 
Asia. In the soft clime and fragrant bowers of the East, 
was man's birthplace and cradle. There indeed, was the 
Eden of the world, and there was its childhood nurtured. 
There were the earliest and simplest governments; patri- 
archal, despotic, but parental too — parental in their indul- 
gence, parental in their summary discipline and instant pun- 
ishment ; and there were institutions fitted in every respect 
to be the leading strings of the world's childhood. Do you 
not see men there, seated as on school forms, in the great 
divisions of caste ; generation after generation taking their 
places on those forms, with all the docility of children ; find- 
ing them, to a certain extent, seats of instruction, and at any 
rate barriers against universal anarchy — barriers indeed, 

* I state this in the most general way. I know how many exceptions and 
deviations there may seem to be ; but such, taking the whole world into the ac- 
count, I believe to be the general course of things. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 261 

without which they could receive no instruction. Caste, in 
India and Egypt, was nothing else but the extreme of a 
principle that has prevailed in all ages ; i. e., the division 
of society into ranks and orders. The Indian parent taught 
his son his own trade or pursuit ; and the son could follow 
no other. He could not, like the German apprentice in the 
middle ages, wander over the country for three years as a 
journeyman. The German had more liberty ; but his liberty 
was strictly limited. There have always been restrictions 
upon the freedom of occupation ; till in this country every 
man is allowed, I had almost said, to do what he will, where 
he will. But this liberty would have been disorder and 
ruin in the old Indian or Egyptian life. It could no more 
have borne the same liberty than literal children could, in 
these days. Do you not see again, the leading traits of 
childhood, in the absolute and universal submission to au- 
thority, and in the unreasoning, unaspiring contentment with 
their lot, of Hindoostan and China ? Do you not also see the 
people of Southern Asia and of Egypt, lapped in the bosom 
of a rich mother earth and of a mild embracing climate; 
with few wants, with few cares, with few calls to exertion ? 
Do you not see them moreover wrapped about with mate- 
rial influences, pupils of matter, taking all their ideas from 
physical nature, and so building vast pyramids and splen- 
did mausoleums and stupendous rock-temples, excavated 
from the very mountains, like those of Petra and Ellora ; 
and estimating the forces of their armies alone by numbers ; 
attracted by outward decorations, conceiving of power, of 
kingship, always as something seated 'upon a magnificent 
throne, holding out a jewelled sceptre and clothed with gor- 
geous habiliments ? Look at Xerxes and Darius, thus seated 
on their thrones — the great child-kings ; surrounded by the 
cloud of innumerable hosts ; Oriental homages at their feet ; 
silken tent-curtains swelling in the night breeze over them ; 
music in their ears : they never imagined that anything of 
hardship or peril could approach them : — when lo ! at Platsea 
and Marathon, shot the lightning of intellect into that 



262 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

cloud, and scattered the visions of Oriental greatness, and 
revolutionized the ideas of an age. 

There is discrimination doubtless to be made, among 
these Oriental nations, in regard to progress. In China, life 
retires back into the most childish simplicity, docility and 
subjection. The emperor was the government, and the 
law, and the morality, and the religion — and the very peo- 
ple ; all was absorbed into him. The rigor of caste in India 
— i. 6\, recognized classes with recognized rights — was some- 
thing better than this stereotyped, this solidified unity. The 
subjection of inferiors was such in China, that if a son com- 
plained of his father, or a younger brother of his elder, he 
was to be whipped with a hundred blows and banished three 
years, even if his complaint were just; if not, he was to be 
strangled. If a son lifted his hand against his father, his 
flesh was to be torn from his body with hot pincers. I am 
speaking of the past ; such is the law ; how often it is ex- 
ecuted now, I do not know. In China, all was prosaic — 
life, learning, and philosophy alike. The earliest Chinese 
sage divided all knowledge into three departments — silk 
culture, bridge building, and the training of burden-bearing 
animals. The philosophy of Confucius never went beyond 
the simplest precepts of morality and religious veneration. 
jSTo deep questions are discussed ; no sense is entertained 
apparently that there are such questions. It is the very 
earliest childhood of philosophy. The Indian philosophy, 
with all its dreaminess and mysticism, goes far beyond this. 
It meditates the deepest questions. The secret of nature, 
the mystery of God, the end of being, invite its contempla- 
tion. Its system indeed was pantheism; but the Chinese 
could hardly be said to have any system. And although 
they were a purer people than those of India, it was because 
they were more childlike, submissive, and timid. The men- 
dacity of the people of India is well known. The Chinese, 
perhaps, did not dare to lie. 

The Persian was considerably advanced beyond either. 
The Light which he worshipped was not Lama, not Brah- 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 263 

ma, not any particular existence, but the sentient All itself . 
It was not Ormuzd as the original principle, but the Zeroene 
Akerene — the infinite and uncreated Life. And the Per- 
sian Zend-Avesta — i. e., living words — discoursed far more 
nobly than the old Indian mythologies. In all respects too, 
political and social, the Persian life was a clear step beyond 
the Indian. In fine, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews, and the 
Egyptians, it is well known, went far beyond them all ; 
whether we consider their polity, their religion, their com- 
merce, learning, or arts. In fact, as you advance westward 
from the farthest East, every step of your survey is a step of 
progress ; and I believe the rule will hold good, as you 
travel on through successive nations and ages down to the 
present day. "Westward the star of empire takes its 
way," says Berkeley : certainly that has been the course of 
the empire of civilization. 

"We have glanced now at its first great phase ; in which 
docility, submission, mental slavery to religion, to govern- 
ment, to social order, held almost absolute sway. 

But Asia at length ceased to be the theatre to which 
the eyes of men were directed ; and the great drama of the 
world's story passed away to the shores of Greece. 

Here was a new world, a new people, a new genus of 
the human race. Offshoots perhaps from Oriental civiliza- 
tion, that took root on the shores and islands of Asia Minor, 
small tribes that wandered at their will along the northern 
boundaries of the Mediterranean, born of the sea, bred 
among the hills, they had escaped from Oriental passiveness 
and from the bondage of great empires ; they were hardy, 
vigorous, active, and above all, free. For here especially 
was the birth of intellectual freedom ; of a freely working 
and creative energy, which unfolded itself in religion, in 
polity, and in literature. 

So situated, trained and endowed, Greece made a large 
step in the world's progress. She took from Asia and Egypt 
what they had to give, their laws, their systems of philoso- 
phy, their mythologies, their crude and gigantic forms of 



264 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

art ; and refined them from their grossness, stripped them 
of their clumsy overlayings, idealized what was crude and 
material in them, and wrought them into delicacy and 
beauty — both of form and thought. She rose from sense, 
to idealism. The earth-gods gave place to celestial powers. 
The fabled war of the earthborn Titans against the heavenly 
divinities who overcame them, is probably the mythologi- 
cal expression of that fact. But all the mythology and re- 
ligious art of Greece had their precursors and prototypes in 
Egypt and Asia. The Sun in the Persian worship, the 
Osiris of the Egyptians, was in Greece, the beautiful Apollo. 
" The gods of Greece," says Heeren, " were moral persons ; " 
they were not symbolical, but ideal; and they could no 
longer be represented as monsters with many heads and 
arms. 

But Greece had more to do than to make statues or to 
spiritualize or humanize the old mythologies. In her was 
developed the first free, political energy in the world. 
There had been singular freedom in the Hebrew land ; but 
it was comparatively passive ; and besides, it was pressed 
on either side, by the Assyrian and Egyptian monarchies. 
In Greece, freedom had a field to itself. Yet more, it was 
disenthralled from Oriental languor. It breathed its inspi- 
ration into the whole life of the people. It expressed itself 
in literature. It resolved itself into deeds. It was full of 
restless, of youthful activity. Yes, upon the hills of Greece 
went forth the struggling youth of the world ; it went forth 
in toil, and it went forth in battle. Her soil was compara- 
tively sterile, and her climate bracing, though pure and de- 
licious ; and hers was the hard hand, the strong sinew, and 
the manly nurture. Her very sports were races and wrest- 
lings and feats of strength. 

The Grecian literature was a still more remarkable 
stride ; and may seem to bring into question our position, 
that she lived in the youth of time. There are indeed won- 
ders in it that cannot be accounted for, except by an origi- 
nal power, a divine energy native to the human soul, and 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 265 

hardly yet recognized in our theories of culture. That the 
poems of Homer, defying all after competition in epic verse, 
should have burst out from the darkness of a rude and al- 
most unknown antiquity, is a mystery, for which I confess 
I have no other solution. The perfection of the Greek lan- 
guage and style surprises me far less. For it appears to 
me that the whole Greek culture owed a great deal of its 
perfection and power to the limited channel in which it 
flowed, to the singleness of its aim ; which was to em- 
body nature and humanity in their simplest and grandest 
characteristics, without grasping the wider ranges and more 
complicated forms of human thought. I think I have 
known a youth of twenty who, in his style, approached 
much more nearly to the Greek simplicity and purity, than 
he did at forty, when he had much more complex and diffi- 
cult forms of thought to grapple with. Deep philosophiz- 
ing is very apt to spoil the style, or at least this kind of per- 
fection in it. And the modern poet, who sounds the depths 
of the modern mind, has far more difficulty in expressing 
his thought with force and clearness, than had Homer and 
Sophocles. And I maintain that the whole literature of the 
Greeks was youthful, compared with that of modern times. 
There was nothing in their drama like that comprehension 
of the whole breadth of our humanity which we see in 
Shakspeare, or the espousal of its noblest interests and affec- 
tions in Schiller. There was nothing in their poetry like 
the introversion, the self-communion, the subjective charac- 
ter of modern genius, in Wordsworth and Browning. There 
was nothing in Herodotus and Thucydides to compare with 
the philosophical insight into history, of Herder and Guizot. 
There was nothing in Plato and Aristotle to ctaipare with 
the breadth of Bacon and Leibnitz, or the sharp and patient 
analysis of Locke or of Kant. Of ancient and modern 
science I need say nothing ; for there is no comparison. 

The next great step of the world was planted in Home. 
But was it a step onward ? This it may seem more diffi- 
cult to prove. In philosophy, in poetry, in art, in graceful 



266 OX THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

culture, certainly it was not. But there were two offices 
which Rome discharged for the world's culture, that were 
of more practical and diffusive benefit than anything done 
in Greece. 

The first was that of lawgiver ; more important to the 
world at that period, than philosophy or art. In this re- 
spect she went entirely beyond her predecessor. For im- 
practicable political theories, like those of Plato, and for ill- 
defined rights of property and persons, she substituted a 
grand and elaborated Code of Law. Law has far more to 
do with the welfare of well-ordered society, than books or 
theories, orations or poems, pictures or statues. The Roman 
law was precisely what her barbarian invaders needed ; nay, 
and of such permanent value is it, that it has continued, 
under the name of the Civil Law, to be the guide of more 
than half the cultivated world to this day. 

The second office which Rome discharged for the world, 
was that of diffuser. That which was pent up within the 
narrow confines of Greece, was now scattered through the 
world. Plato and Aristotle, Homer and Herodotus, JEs- 
cbylus and Sophocles, were transplanted to the banks of 
the Rhine, the Seine, and the Thames. Stores of cultivated 
wisdom there were in the world ; but how should they 
benefit, how enlighten the Gaul, the Saxon, the rude tribes 
of Germany ! It was for that stupendous and earth-shadow- 
ing power, that spread her wings from Britain to Parthia 
and India, to bear to the nations the burden of ancient 
lore. Her legions swept through the Avorld ; but not for 
evil alone ; philosophy and the arts, and Christianity too, 
followed in their train. Gaul, and Britain might have re- 
mained unchristianized for ages, if they had not come with- 
in the sweep of the Roman power. 

Por the part which she had to act, Rome was fitted by 
her character and whole training. She who was to spread 
herself over the earth, had no home character to begin with. 
Not from quiet patriarchal hearths did she take her origin, 
but from a robber's lair. Rome, at the first, was a nest of 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 267 

military marauders, a refuge of renegades from surrounding 
tribes, a colluvies, says Livy himself, a sink into which 
flowed the dregs of the Latin cities around ; their very 
wives these Roman robbers tore from the Sabines, and the 
children of this violence were Ishmaels. From this origin 
came, not beauty nor grace, nor the liberality which com- 
merce, friendly communication with the world, give ; but 
simple, concentrated strength. The Roman was a man of 
iron nerve and firmness. In his girding arm was a power 
to hold in check those tendencies which, in Greece, had 
snapped the bonds of social order. The beautiful Grecian 
theories of right, with the Roman, hardened into law. Law, 
with him, as has been often observed, was morality, religion, 
the only idea of right. Eeligion — religio, from religare, to 
bind — it was simply a state bond. The Roman genius is not 
attractive, not beautiful to us ; but it had its use. Cicero is 
its fairest representative, but for spiritual beauty he does 
not compare with Plato. His religion was a correct senti- 
ment, often noble, touching sometimes from its sadness ; but 
it does not freely and joyously well up from the deep foun- 
tains within, like Plato's. In short, the joyous and graceful 
Grecian boy of fifteen has become, in Rome, as we some- 
times see a youth of twenty, when first touching the practi- 
cal interests of life, utilitarian, selfish, grasping. It is not 
beautiful. An iron jar is not so beautiful as a porcelain 
vase ; but it may be more useful ; it can better hold and 
transmit what is deposited in it. 

And when that iron jar was expanded to a mighty vase, 
wide as the world, and then broke in pieces, we do not 
lament over it ; we say, it had served its purpose. Perhaps 
no great empire ever fell, with so little of the sympathy of 
the world, as this. When we learn from Tacitus, that even 
so early as the first century, the armies of Rome, ay, of old 
military Rome, were composed wholly of foreigners ; when 
we read that, in the fourth century, in a time of fam- 
ine, all the teachers of youth were banished from the city, 
and six thousand dancers were retained — we give up a peo- 



268 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

pie, who had lost all the spirit for which national existence 
is worth preserving. 

The dissolution of the Roman Empire opens to us the 
next great scene in human affairs. The theatre is Central 
and "Western Europe. The political form is feudality. The 
social powers are the family and individual force. The pre- 
siding genius is Christianity ; sadly corrupted indeed, but 
still it is Christianity. To adventure upon this restless sea 
of the middle ages, with all its struggling elements, its 
crossing tides and stormy winds, is of course more than I 
propose ; but something may be said to indicate the great 
current that was bearing the world onward. 

The feudal system was far freer than the despotisms 
that preceded it. It was not, as I think is often supposed? 
a mere relation of barons and serfs ; it w r as a general form 
of government, a political hierarchy ; extending from the 
emperor or king, through successive grades, down to the 
lowest subject ; barons, counts, lords, kings, as well as serfs, 
holding their power or privilege respectively of their supe- 
riors ; and holding it on condition of certain services to be 
rendered. The tenure was a fee / a word from the old Teu- 
tonic, or from the Latin, fides— fede in Italian— -fe in Spanish, 
i. e., a trust. The idea involved in this tenure was that of 
a duty — of the low to the high, and of the high to the low. 
It is obvious then, that the feudal system undertook to de- 
fine the relations of the governing and the governed. It 
recognized in both alike, certain rights and duties. This, 
if I mistake not, was a new thing in the world. The old 
Roman law minutely described the rights and duties of cit- 
izens toward one another, but not the reciprocal claims of 
the government and people. That is to say, it was law, but 
not a constitution. In the feudal time was first heard in 
the world the word privileges. It was the fashion of the 
time, so to speak, to demand them. The religious orders, 
as well as the civil, were constantly obtaining privileges from 
their superiors. Privileges, T repeat ; it was a word of po- 
tent effect, a precedent never to be forgotten. The whole 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. £69 

struggle in Europe, by which political freedom advanced, 
has been a struggle for privileges — a struggle of nobles with 
kings, of the people with them both. 

JSText, as M. Guizot has remarked,* a new family cul- 
ture sprang from the feudal system. The feudal lords, the 
feudal superiors of every rank, dwelt apart and alone. They 
were driven by their very isolation to some culture, to some 
mental resources. And they were numerous enough to give 
some tone to public sentiment. Woman assumed a new 
place, a new importance in society. The romantic poetry 
of the period, and the spirit of chivalry, both afford suffi- 
cient proof of that. 

But above all, individual force was developed in this pe- 
riod. Men began slowly to learn and to feel that they were 
men, that they had rights, that they had individual, yea, 
and immortal interests. Christianity inspired this feeling, 
but feudalism fostered it beyond all previous systems. Ser- 
vice to superiors was voluntary. The serf or vassal might 
choose his suzerain, and exact guarantees from him. A new 
feeling of selfhood, self-consciousness, self-reliance slowly 
grew up in the human breast. It grew especially in the 
cities. Commerce and mechanic art made men rich and 
strong ; and they were able to buy or exact from kings 
and nobles, important concessions. There was much free- 
dom in Greece, but little individual force. And when did 
there ever stand upon the earth such a visible representative 
of individual force as the armed knight ? — clad, himself and 
his good steed, in complete steel ; with his plated gauntlets, 
and breastplate, and shield and barred helmet; with his 
double-edged falchion on one side, and poniard on the other, 
and the axe at his saddlebow, and his long lance resting 
upon the stirrup — a moving tower of iron, seated upon a 
fire-breathing engine : our modern men dwindle into puny 
citizens compared with this. 

And the good knight must needs wage war — must wage 

* Civilization in Europe, 4th lecture. 



270 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

it even to the walls of Jerusalem. And what followed ? 
Why, he must have means — must have money. And where 
could he get it? Why, of the good burgesses and citizens. 
And did they give it for nothing ? 'No, they bought privi- 
leges of knights and nobles and kings. Thus, the whole 
course of things, and especially the Crusades, helped to 
raise the people, to sink the rulers. The iron tower, like 
the image of Nebuchadnezzar, was destined to fall, and 
crumble in pieces, and disappear from the earth. 

I have said that Christianity presided over this epoch. 
However imperfectly understood, it did reign with absolute 
sway. It was a law from which there was no appeal. The 
high and the powerful, though they violated, never dared for- 
mally to set it aside. They trembled before its spiritual pow- 
ers and awful retributions. And it was not only a law of 
right, but a spirit of mercy. It not only awed, but softened 
the hearts of men. It was an image of suffering patience and 
pity that they worshipped. That one perfect life — that one 
great sacrifice — think, what its appeal must have been, com- 
pared with the influence of any former religion. It espoused, 
above all, the cause of the poor, the suffering, the wronged 
and crushed. The gospel was humanity, even more than 
it was divinity. The light that came into the world, was 
veiled in the softened shadow of human pity and gentle- 
ness. 

Still, however, the civilization of this period was ex- 
tremely immature. It was full of misdirected efforts and 
wild struggles. No satisfactory civil order was established, 
nor proper recognition of human rights obtained. The hu- 
man race went on through the middle ages, like a rash and 
reckless youth, when approaching his majority. It pursued 
a wild and irregular career ; now rising, now falling ; now 
stumbling on the dark mountains of ignorance, and now 
wallowing in the great Roman sink of sensuality — with 
broken columns and fallen temples all around — now filled 
with the fierce, hot haste of passion, and then, with the sul- 
len melancholy of despair. All its labors were tentative. 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 271 

The whole course of things was a series of experiments, pre- 
paring for a future and brighter day. 

In that brighter day, I believe, we now stand ; in the 
great day of the world's manhood ; not in the latter, how- 
ever, but in the earlier part of that day ; for I look upon 
the grand agents now in the field, as having only com- 
menced their magnificent work. 

This epoch, beginning with the sixteenth century, is 
crowded with events, which are alike proofs and promises 
of advancement — the birth, as a popular fact, of free reli- 
gious thought in the Reformation in Germany ; the great 
stand for political liberty in England, and the building up 
and prosperity of the American Republic ; the establishment 
of the inductive philosophy, and the almost entire creation 
of the physical sciences ; the rise of the fine arts in Italy, 
and the cultivation of music, which are almost wholly with- 
in this period ; the invention of the art of printing, of the 
cotton gin, and of the steam engine ; the introduction of the 
system of common schools and the diffusion of knowledge 
among the people ; in fine, the unprecedented impulse given 
to the minds of men by the universal spirit of improve- 
ment. 

All this, I need not insist, is progress. Neither can I 
dwell upon these subjects in detail; nor is it necessary, per- 
haps, for my purpose; they speak sufficiently for them- 
selves. I can only refer, in general, to the indications which 
these agencies bear, to the sphere in which they are work- 
ing, and to the encouragement, if not a more solemn feeling, 
which they should inspire. 

Look then at this grand array of forces. Can any one 
of them stop ? Can the spirit of freedom, political or re- 
ligious, die out from the hearts of men ? Have they got 
hold of rights, and will they ever let them go ? Can philos- 
ophy or science stop ? Go ask the studious and enthusiastic 
toilers in those enchanted fields, and they will tell you that 
you might as well expect them to desire the sun to go down, 
when its morning light is spread upon the mountains. Can 



272 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

genius be quenched, or the fine arts dash chisel and palette 
to the ground, or music, that is making the air of the world 
vibrate to its melodies, die out into mournful silence ? Can 
men stop printing books, or reading them ? Can they break 
the steam engine in pieces ? — unless they find, if that be 
possible, a better power. But will they give up, after hav- 
ing found it, a power to bear their cars over the land, and 
their ships over the sea ? Can this pestilent notion of edu- 
cating the people, this universal diffusion of knowledge, by 
any means have a stop put to it ? I am afraid not. Let 
Austria try. But she does not try. She is swept on by the 
resistless current. No, the spirit of improvement has got 
hold of the world ; and the exorcism to drive it out, is not 
yet found, and never will be. No, the world has got be- 
yond the waverings of its youth. It has come of age. It 
has come to the sober thought and settled purpose of man- 
hood ; and nothing can shake that thought and purpose. 
Look again at the theatre of this modern culture. It is 
Western Europe and America ; not an inaccessible moun- 
tain land, fit to be the fastness of mere freedom ; not a vast 
plain, like those of Asia, opened for the expansion of im- 
mense empires ; but a tract of the earth, washed by oceans, 
intersected by bays and rivers, essentially commercial ; hav- 
ing easy communication with all the world. It is the grand 
propagandist portion of the world. Its inhabitants, descend- 
ing from races in whom the fullest measure of human en- 
ergy has been developed, have become the most enlightened 
nations of the earth — and the most rapidly growing. The 
Saxon race, which two centuries ago was only 3,000,000, 
now numbers 53,000,000. These countries, thus advanced 
in civilization, filled with manufactories, with arts, with 
books, with inventions for human comfort and improve-] 
ment, possess the very advantages which the rest of the 
world wants. And now, just when they are prepared for 
this office of diffusion, is the grand instrument of diffusion 
put into their hands : I mean, of course, the power of steam. 
Now, at length, shall they send back to Asia and the farthest 



ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 273 

Tartary the cultivated children descended from their swarm- 
ing colonies ; and to Africa, the descendants of the captives 
once torn from her bosom. It has become just as certain 
that steamships and steam cars shall penetrate the solitudes 
of Africa and the crowded villages of populous Asia, and 
carry to them our arts, our sciences, our literature, and our 
religion, as that the light which breaks upon the eastern 
horizon shall spread itself through the world. 

I know that dark fears are entertained by some concern- 
ing what is passing in these very countries — popular out- 
breaks, decline of the old reverence, signs, as they think, of 
social deterioration. But it seems to me, with all due re- 
spect for their opinion, that they are looking at the little 
eddyings on the stream of events, and not at the deep cur- 
rent. There are popular outbreaks, but they soon pass 
away. There is less respect for rank and riches — less even 
than there should be — the world does not easily stop at the 
right point ; but is there less respect for talent, learning, and 
worth \ I believe that the indications, which the alarmists 
constantly adduce, are the superficial ones. The movement 
of things is perhaps never direct, but in circles. Rubbish 
and straw are on the outside, and they are blown this way 
and that way ; and in the wide sweep of the elements, in 
the vast gyrations of the slow revolutionary movement that 
is bearing on the civilized world, things may seem to be 
going backward, and may really le going backward in cer- 
tain quarters — i. e., relatively going backward, while all is 
actually going forward. ]S ay, and the more violent are the 
gusts upon the surface, the eddies upon the stream, the 
more rapid and strong may be the great and onward tend- 
ency. 

This impression which prevails in the minds of some of 
the best men, that we are in a state of social deterioration, is 
no new thing in the world, and it is a very curious thing. I 
have sometimes thought that it proceeds, in part, from a nat- 
ural modesty ; that it results, under this influence, from a 
comparison very likely to be made by superior minds, and 
18 



274 ON THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 

not by the body of the people. Our predecessors, the lead- 
ing men, by whom as pillars, the world was borne up, are 
venerable to us ; the places they filled, the presidencies, the 
magistracies ; the parts they acted — of orators, judges, law- 
yers, clergy — were clothed with dignity and honor: they 
were great and noble men to us ; their figures loom up ma- 
jestically in the dim land of the past. Now these great 
functions — these presidencies, magistracies, forums, pulpits 
— have fallen into the hands of us, pigmy men ; these high 
places have sunk down to the level of our common and 
every-day life ; we are nothing to ourselves, compared with 
what they were to us ; we cannot believe that we equal them, 
or anything near it ; all is run down, we say ; society is de- 
teriorating ; the world is growing more ignoble every day. 
The next generation will probably make the same reflection, 
when it compares itself with us. 

It is no new thing in the world, as I have said ; and. if it 
were true — if the world, according to this impression, had 
been really ever growing worse, it must have come, by this 
time, to a sad pass indeed. Even the old Greek Hesiod 
thought that he was living in " an iron age," and that all 
the happy ages had gone by. Longinus, who lived in the 
time of Aurelian and in the court of Zenobia, compared the 
men of his day, to children, whose limbs were contracted 
and cramped by bandages.* The decadence of Koine might 
well justify something of this despondency. And we can 
sympathize with the noble Cicero in his sadness, who, writ- 
ing to his friend Atticus, from his retreat in the beautiful 
island of Astura, says, " I retire in the morning to the thick 
and wild wood, and do not leave it till evening. Next to 
you, the dearest thing is solitude. In this, my converse is 
with letters ; but tears often interrupt it. I restrain them, 
as much as I can ; but as yet, am not equal to it." f .More 
magnanimously fought his battle with discouragement a 
modern man, and in an hour no less dark. It was amidst 

* De Sublimitate, chap. 43. 
f Epist. ad Atticum, B. xii. 15. 



ON THE PEOBLEM OF HUMAN DESTINY. 275 

the horrors of the French Revolution. There, in a street in 
Paris, in a house sought for hiding, and while the blood of 
the innocent and noble was flowing around him, sat a man 
whose quiet employment was the writing of a book. That 
man was the Marquis de Condorcet. And what, think you, 
was the subject of the book he was writing ? It was marts 
certain progress to liberty, virtue, and happiness. 

It is certain. It is certain because it is the purpose of 
Heaven. It is certain because of what it has already cost. 
It is certain because all the steps of past progress are pro- 
mises. And what promises ? Promises earned from ages 
of toil and sorrow ; promises written on the rack and the 
scaffold, where patriots have died for liberty, and Christians 
for truth; promises pronounced over the gloomy altars 
where sorrowing nations have been slain ; ay, and sealed in 
the blood of the noblest men in the world : such promises 
shall not go unfulfilled. 

Ever solemn is the story of the world. A solemn thing 
it is for us, the American people, to take our place in the 
great procession of nations. Whence came we ; and why are 
we here, but to do our part ? The sorrowing ages call upon 
us to do our part. The tears and groans of long-suffering and 
sighing humanity call upon " us to do our part. Empires 
crushed under the weight of hopeless bondage — millions 
that have wandered in the darkness of ignorance and amidst 
the terrors of superstition, address to us — to us especially — 
the great adjuration ; and they say, O ye, a people, free, 
intelligent, Christian ! — who know your duty and have 
liberty to perform it ; O ye, a people, whose foot is set 
upon an unchartered soil ; whose hands are filled with the 
riches of the world ; whose children, partners of yourselves, 
are to wander down the coming ages, through the fairest 
domain that God ever gave to man ; hear the voice of hu- 
manity ; hear the voice that comes from earth — and that 
comes from Heaven ! 

THE END. 



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